


we got a lot that hasn't even began

by argle_fraster



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - War, BAMF Stiles, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Emissary Stiles Stilinski, Explicit Language, M/M, Supernatural Bonds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-16
Updated: 2013-11-16
Packaged: 2017-12-30 06:15:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1015089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/argle_fraster/pseuds/argle_fraster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek, injured and on the run, stumbles upon an unmarked, sympathetic outpost in California that changes everything and sends him back towards the hunter who killed his family with an ace up his sleeve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we got a lot that hasn't even began

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rebeccaann08 (halesmoon)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/halesmoon/gifts).



> Rebeccaann08, I hope that you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it. I took your emissary and AU ideas and fused them into something that grew on its own, and became a monster (oops). Much thanks to my beta M. <3 Title from the breath-taking Ellie Goulding song 'Stay Awake', to which quite a lot of this story was written, and which I highly recommend taking four minutes to listen to. :)

The first thing he hears is the shooting. That's not really surprising; what's surprising is that it's aimed at _him_ , and it took him several agonizingly long moments to realize it. He immediately cuts to the left, half out of desperation and half because he's already leaking blood all over the sun-baked dirt beneath him, and he knows he doesn't have much longer left before he runs out of strength completely. The wound is festering, perhaps, because the hunter had used a knife smeared and burned in mountain ash, and he can feel it searing the torn flesh around the wound itself.

He brakes, hard, and skids with his knees against the ground. He doesn't have the strength to get back up again, and it's going to kill him - the shots are hitting the dirt around him, thundering bursts of contact, and he just thinks wildly that _this is it._ This is the end.

Derek breathes, in and out, wheezing, rasping gasps for air. He waits for the inevitable bullet wound, and knows that the outpost isn't stupid enough not to have had wolfs bane bullets stored for just such an occasion. He thinks he remembered people saying that when faced with demise, one's whole life flashes before their eyes, but he can see only red - pain and red and fire, and the weight of Laura's death like an overwhelming burden on his shoulders. It's crushing him, pinning him to the dirt he's going to bleed out on, and he waits, because he can't do anything else.

He's been running for too long, and there simply isn't anything left.

The bullets stop, and then the anguish sets in; if the guard doesn't shoot him outright, clean and fast and merciful, then it means the torture is coming, and Derek is shreds of being held together with aching, bleeding strands of flesh. He'll tell them anything they want to know just to welcome in the bitter black end, and he wants to howl, to let his wolf voice the rage and fury over being held so helpless at the end of all things.

There are footsteps behind him, getting steadily closer, and then the unmistakable sound of a shotgun being cocked. Derek has no doubt where the barrels are aimed.

"Get up," a voice commands, and he sounds _young_ \- are the outposts using their own children as guards now? Has the situation gotten so dire? It's been a long time since Derek was surrounded by humans, and he's been preoccupied with his own personal war, but still... he'd thought the rebellion was winning.

He'd _hoped_ that the rebellion was winning.

There was an order there, buried in a mass of confusion that Derek is still fighting his way out of, and in a half-hearted attempt to comply, he struggles to his feet. The joint in his left front leg gives out and sends him face-first into the dirt again, and he huffs, into the ground, mostly out of pain and tinged with frustration. It sends a cloud of dust into the air which hangs heavy and refuses to disperse.

"Get up!" the guard orders, again. This time, Derek can't summon any of the energy necessary to try and do it. He just whines, low in his throat, and waits for the death blow.

The footsteps round where he is laying. He doesn't look up, because he can't - he can't look at the face of his own demise, not here, not now, and he's suddenly grateful that at least he doesn't know who this person is. A faceless killer is infinitely better than the one he willingly led inside and held the door open for.

"I said-" the kid's words are cut off, abrupt, like he just sucked in a lungful of air because something surprised him. Exhausted and drained, Derek can still hear the rapid-fire beat of the guard's heart. There _is_ surprise there. "Shit. Oh, _shit_ , you're bleeding, you're _bleeding_ , I swear I was just firing warning shots. I never meant to hit you, that wasn't the - oh _fuck_ -"

Warning shots. Of all the things - Derek hadn't even noticed that the bullets were hitting wide and clear of him, only that they were splitting the dirt nearby. He'd been too overcome with his own pain to put the obvious things together.

"Lydia!" the guard yells, voice strained and unhappy, and then the young man leans in and he's all up in Derek's face, his bubble, the snout that Derek is sure is matted with blood and coated with the bone-dry dirt he's collapsed in. His hands go on Derek's shoulders, his haunches, checking to see, no doubt, where the damage is.

There's a press of fingers against the delicate skin above Derek's ribs, where the mountain ash is smoldering and burning, and Derek yelps sharply.

"Fuck, shit - _Lydia!_ " the kid cries again, more urgent this time. Then he leans in closer, so Derek can practically feel how hard his heart is hammering against his chest, and says, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry - I didn't mean to hit you. This isn't - we aren't hunters, that's not what we do, or what we are."

Not hunters could only mean that this human outpost was sympathetic. Amazing. Derek hadn't even known where he was running, and he's going to bleed out under the hands of someone who could have _helped_. He tries to bark, and ends up being able to only whimper.

"No, don't die!" the guard exclaims, frantic. Derek can feel his hands pressing against the side of his chest, where the wound starts and drags down low across his belly, but it feels faint and faraway, like it's happening to someone else. "Oh, god, I thought I was - I thought I was easily wide of you, I just wanted to make sure that you weren't going to kill all of us. Oh, _god_ , I can't believe I shot you. Holy shit, I'm so sorry."

On the edge of his senses, Derek makes out another set of footsteps, lighter and with a different gait to the steps - longer, more pronounced, somehow, like someone unused to being overlooked - but that's all he registers before everything starts to dim. The lights, the touch, the kid's constant stream-of-consciousness relaying of his thoughts, it all fades until there is nothing left but the look on Laura's face when the sword ran her through, and then that, too, is gone.

\--

When Derek comes to again, he is human. It's always strange to go under as the wolf and come to in his human form - jarring, somehow, like his brain has missed the connection and suddenly can't quite keep up with the change. He starts, bolting upright, and only then realizes that he's strapped down, strips of thick leather and metal holding his arms in place.

"You're awake," a female voice says, the sort of no-nonsense tone that instantly sets Derek on edge, because that tone is too familiar to him right now.

"You sound disappointed," he does manage to grit out, as he assesses the situation he finds himself in; the restraints are well-made and obviously created to hold werewolves, because they are infused and strengthened with something that is keeping him from snapping the cured hide. The room around him is bare, devoid of anything that might distinguish it, and white-walled, which means it probably used to be some sort of functioning infirmary.

Before the wars, at least, before the hunters started filling it with werewolves, maybe it was a hospital for human kind.

When he finally shifts his gaze from the hollow surroundings to the person standing to his left, he finds himself staring at a woman with long hair the color of a sunset and shrewd eyes.

"Not disappointed," she responds, and there's a tug at the corners of her mouth, something that might be respect in any other situation, "just surprised. We didn't think you'd make it."

"Who's we?" Derek asks.

The woman blinks down at him, and he can see by the way her gaze roves over his chest, the leather binding his arms, his face, that she is carefully studying him and the limited movements that he has been able to make - taking stock of them, perhaps. There's something tight around her eyes.

"I think the most important question here is who are you?" she turns it back to him, and though she has no weapon that Derek can see, he knows he is at a disadvantage; this is their turf, and he has willingly stumbled into it, bleeding and damaged and on the run. "Because we _should_ immediately turn you over to the Coalition-"

"You won't," Derek interrupts. He hopes he sounds more sure than he feels.

The woman tilts her head to the side. "And what makes you say that?"

"The guard," Derek says. It's hard to speak - his body is still healing, and with another start, he wonders if that's the reason he woke human rather than wolf. His wolf form was so badly hurt, it may be impossible to shift until his system works out all the damaging poison that was used against it. "The guard said you weren't hunters."

"Stiles talks too much," the woman says, mouth pursed, but eyes approving.

"Please," Derek tries.

There's a tap of shoes against tiles, and the steady, near-constant rhythm of the woman's heart. "Why did you come here if you didn't know before you showed up that we weren't hunters? That's a dangerous assumption to be making, especially around these parts."

Derek doesn't answer, because he can't quite find a way to put into words all the things that have exploded in his life, leaving him covered in blood and alone.

"What were you running from?" the woman asks, more insistent this time, and leans in so that a bit of her russet-colored hair falls into a semi-circle on Derek's chest. "Who was it that shoved your skin full of mountain ash and wolfs bane, instead of just outright killing you?"

He can't, can't get the words out, and he's shaking his head just as the guard from earlier comes barreling through the door frame and nearly wipes out when his shoes skid sharply across the smooth floor - his hands catch the small table against the wall, and the legs squeak in response, echoing.

"He's awake," the boy breathes. He looks young, just like the woman. None of them can be over 19.

"Thank you for stating the obvious," the girls says, dryly. She backs up, away from Derek's vulnerable form, and he gets the feeling that the conversation is far from over. The guard, however, seems to exist on a different agenda track. He rounds the table to Derek's other side, and his face is everything the girl's isn't: open, readable, concerned.

"Jesus, I really thought I'd shot you," he says. "But my aim is better than I was giving myself credit for. You looked like you'd been through hell. Some awful form of torture, huh?"

"Torture is against the law," the girl tells him, even though Derek knows that everyone in the room is well aware of that fact. Why torture werewolves, when it's far easier and cleaner to kill them on sight?

"So is failing to kill a werewolf as soon as you see it," the boy snorts. "Nobody just _rolls around_ in toxic materials with an open wound to see what happens."

"Stiles," Derek says, because he remembers the name the girl let slip earlier. It's more convenient to put a name to a face, and it was obviously the correct thing to do, because Stiles' face brightens immediately, as if he's warmed by the idea that a rogue, half-dead werewolf knows who he is.

"Yeah, that's right," he answers. "I'm Stiles, the one who didn't actually shoot you."

Derek tries to pull at the restraints a bit, just to test, and the girl's eyes snap instantly to the flex of his muscles. "Where am I?" he asks. Wherever it is, he needs to get out. His continued existence is a curse on everyone around him - and he would be a fool to think that being presumed dead would get him off the hit list.

"Are you leading hunters here?" the girl asks. Derek likes that she is upfront about things. He likes that she doesn't try to sugar-coat her words or pretend like there is another reason for talking to him.

"Lydia," Stiles chastises, and Derek finally gets a name for her.

She flips her hair, unmoved. "If we're all going to die, I'd like some advanced warning."

"Yes," Derek says. There's no use lying - if they aren't already on his tail, they will be soon, with their tracking devices and their scent locators, and the equipment that can probably single him out from a hundred meters away in a crowd. The Coalition hadn't spared any expenses once the war started; there aren't hunters out there anymore that aren't well-supplied and outfitted.

"See?" Lydia says, pointedly, like his response proved her point - maybe it did.

Derek tries at the restraints again, but still has nothing. They may not be hunters, but they are equipped to deal with his kind, and that alone makes him nervous. He doesn't trust anyone anymore.

"Even _if_ the hunters are coming here, they can't just breeze in like they own the place," Stiles says, with his hands moving through the air in animated gestures. "There are sanctions and they'd have to get paperwork, and-"

"Not these," Derek grits out, even though thinking about it is making his head go fuzzy and dim. His muscles jerk, constricting involuntarily, and he has to bite down hard, nearly hard enough to draw blood, to get his focus back. His mind wants to stray to blood and Laura's face and the laughter that has followed him on his heels for the past however-many miles he's run. "These hunters can get in anywhere."

"What do you mean, they can't - wait, _Argents_?" Stiles leans in, closer, expression hardening into disbelief. "You have _Argents_ after you?"

"That's it," Lydia snaps. "We can't keep him here. If they find out we were harboring a werewolf instead of taking him down..."

But Stiles has zeroed in on it, the weak spot, the worn part of Derek's armor, like a big cat that knows exactly where to strike to find the most yielding flesh. It's a wolf characteristic, and part of Derek wants to admire him for it, because he's locked on and not going to let go until all the information he wants has been spilt. He leans in, and Derek's senses are awash with him - the scent, his erratic heartbeat, the underlying bits of clove and peppermint and something tangy, like an energy drink infused with too much artificial pep.

"The Argents didn't kill you?" he asks. Then, as if he just realized he answered his own question, he continues, "Obviously, they didn't, since you showed up here. Evidence of torture - and they've been dodging this for years, never had anything to convict them on. They might have sway, but the Coalition might come down on them for it, and certainly the Free Alliance."

"Stiles," Lydia tries, with less force, like she knows that she, too, is helpless against the tide.

"Listen, we can _get_ the Argents on this," Stiles says. He turns to Lydia, one hand resting on the table near Derek's arm, and Derek can feel the heat from even that - humans have such a distinct heat signature. "The Alliance can-"

"-do _nothing_ if the Argents get here first," Lydia finishes for him. She looks pointedly at Derek again, nodding towards him with her chin. "Which, it seems, they are already on their way to do."

"The Alliance can put them _away_ ," Stiles insists. "The power balance can shift if we can unite against this, this is what we _needed_ , Lydia, don't you see?"

Lydia looks unconvinced. There's a long second of silence, and then Stiles turns again, and Derek hears the shift in his heartbeat.

"What did the Argents do to you?" Stiles asks, quieter this time.

"Killed my family," Derek somehow gets out, though it chokes him to do it; chokes him just like the thick smoke tried to, the ash that caught in his throat, the burn that started from the inside and swelled out against his ribs.

"Werewolf packs are in hiding," Stiles says, and shakes his head. "How did they know where to find them?"

Derek's body wants to shift. It wants to escape this, reliving the nightmare, and it can't. It's too weak from the wounds and the poison, and his wolf is howling inside his head without a way to get out. He strains against the restraints just to feel the push of them, to meet the resistance and have something to rail against. "Kate," he replies.

"Kate Argent?" Lydia fills in the blanks, eyebrows rising.

"I don't get it," Stiles says. "How did Kate Argent know where to find your pack?"

"She was our emissary," Derek says.

\--

Cleansing his body of the toxins takes the whole night, and they keep him under lock and key the whole time ("It's not that we don't trust you," Stiles had said, with an apology shining in his eyes, and Lydia had interrupted with, "But we really don't trust you.") and when Derek wakes again, his body feels more whole - at least it's only vaguely aching, a reminder of the trauma it just went through. His arms are still bound, and the leather is digging uncomfortable lines into his wrists.

If they aren't awake yet, there isn't anything he can do except wait for them to come down and either let him out or probe him for more information. The sting of what happened is still too fresh for him to really think about it; he falls back asleep, a fitful sleep that his body doesn't need and his mind rebels against. He dreams of fire, of smoke that is thick and heavy and smelling of burnt hair, smoldering flesh, and once he's managed to wake himself up, he spends the rest of the early morning hours staring at the ceiling, refusing to let it happen again.

\--

Lydia shows up after the sun has risen and Derek can feel the wolf sliding back beneath his skin, placated by the shift in the day and the fact that his body is no longer under attack. She brings with her a plate of food and a glass of water, and only undoes one of his wrist restraints; from a tactical standpoint, his opinion of her rises, but Derek keeps himself guarded. The last human he’d let in had gutted him from the inside out.

She studies him while he eats, and while he doesn’t feel anything malicious in her gaze, it still makes him uncomfortable. Lydia is the kind of person who can immediately examine the situation at hand and make decisions based on her observations - that kind of skill, that kind of _power_ , can easily be used against him, especially when the outpost itself has the advantage.

“Where were you going?” she asks, once he’s done with the food and has handed back the plate to her. “This area isn’t kind to werewolves, not since last year. You had to know that coming here was going to get you killed.”

Maybe he had, but it’s not something that Derek is prepared to tell a complete stranger. “I just needed to get away.”

“From Kate Argent,” Lydia repeats - he wishes she would stop saying the name. It’s like taking a bullet to the chest all over again.

It didn’t seem to be a question, so Derek doesn’t bother with replying.

“How does an Argent go about becoming a werewolf emissary, anyway?” she asks. “The Argents are the most well-known hunters out there, they practically started the Coalition.”

Again, he keeps quiet. He would be afraid of retribution, for staying silent, but this reaction seems to be what Lydia had expected, because she just crosses her arms over her chest and looks at him. She doesn’t seem to _want_ anything - she’s just studying him.

“If I let you out,” she begins, and trails off.

“I’ll leave,” Derek finishes. He doesn’t know where he’ll go, but he knows he has to keep moving; he’s a danger to not only himself, but everyone around him, as soon as Kate figures out that her more creative torture techniques didn’t actually kill him.

“To go where?”

Derek shrugs.

“I suggest you get a better plan,” Lydia snorts, and moves to leave again. There has to be more to the outpost, though Derek can’t actually figure out where the rest of the building is. He’s underground, and if the structure resembles the other ones he’s seen, then it’s half built into the rock beneath the dirt, and half in the grass - hardly camouflaged, without much need to be, and highly defensible. He’s never seen an outpost that didn’t have a guard tower at least two stories high, armed with rifles loaded with wolfs bane bullets.

There’s no _point_ to an outpost that doesn’t have these things.

He doesn’t try explaining to Lydia that there _is_ no better plan. The loss of his family, his _pack_ , is still a gaping hole in his chest, a year later, and all the super healing in the world can’t patch up that absence; the betrayal is less pungent but still just as strong, more of a bitter taste on the back of his tongue. It might be the guilt that is the worst part, the bits Derek can’t wholly focus on, because they’ll eat him alive like a predator in the night.

“Stiles will be down in a half an hour or so,” Lydia tells him.

“For what?” Derek asks, and his mouth goes dry - he’d thought they would skip the more unique interrogation solutions, thought he’d get off easy. He doesn’t want to imagine either of their sharp eyes poised above instruments laced and burned with mountain ash.

“I think he’s researching right now, he’ll probably have some questions for you.”

It would be kinder to just get this whole thing over with. She’s left one of Derek’s hands still unbound, and he can’t figure out why. “Are you going to kill me?”

“No,” she says, and for the first time, looks a little surprised. “We told you, that’s not what we do. We’re not hunters.”

“But I’m going to get all of you killed,” Derek replies. “You might as well save yourselves while you can.”

The look she levels him with his long and heavy with things he can’t put a name to.

“I think,” she starts, slowly, with careful deliberateness, “we’re all already past that point in this.”

\--

True to her word, Stiles arrives a little while later, with an armful of books and a notebook, half the pages rumpled and ripped, like something was spilled on it at one point but he still couldn’t bear to throw the thing away. He sits down unceremoniously in the nearby chair and several of the books fall to the floor; Derek winces at the noise, but Stiles doesn’t seem to care about it at all. He opens one, thumbing through pages until he gets to where he wants to be. It’s only then that he looks up, meeting Derek’s eyes.

“If the Argents are after you, I want as much information as I can get,” he says.

“Why?” Derek asks.

“Because I can’t protect this outpost unless I know what we’re up against.”

It’s a smart move, but Derek still doesn’t understand. “This outpost should easily be able to defend-”

“The Argents are _good_ ,” Stiles interrupts, and leans forward, eyes flashing. “You don’t just go up against them; they can take out everything you _love_. And this - these are my friends. My family.”

Derek had thought that it was only Stiles and Lydia within the confines, but it appears he was wrong. Either the others are out on patrol or trade duty, or they haven’t shown up yet in the room he’s being kept in.

“Just let me go and you won’t have to worry about it,” Derek says, more plea than anything else, because he needs to _run_ , needs to put as much space between Kate Argent and himself as possible, even if it’s just to find a better place to die that won’t be by her hand.

Stiles ignores this, and looks down at the book. “Now, you said Kate was your emissary. There’s not a lot of information about emissaries, because the Coalition keeps a heavy hand on werewolf pack information. I’m sure you could fill me in better than the sanctioned reading materials can.”

Derek doesn’t really know how much the humans are kept in the dark. His family lived wild, in the forests and the mountains, until they’d come in contact with Kate, and she’d been the first emissary Derek had ever known. There simply weren’t many left with the war happening.

“I don’t understand,” he tries, because it’s really the only thing he can find to say.

“I need you to tell me everything,” Stiles says. “Was she... special?”

 _That_ hurts - a ripple all the way down Derek’s chest, mimicking the feel of her fingers as they’d run down his sternum and trailed over the ribs.

“Sorry,” Stiles says, and Derek nearly panics, afraid that Stiles _knows_ , that he can feel it, that he’s already worked out the reason for everything. “I mean, was she... magic?”

“No,” Derek replies, with relief he struggles to keep hidden. “She wasn’t a spark.”

Stiles is nodding, like this was information he expected to hear. “Makes things easier for us, doesn’t it?”

“Emissaries with natural abilities are much stronger,” Derek agrees; so this, the humans know. Either the Coalition has allowed this information, or Stiles has access to a network of lore that’s slipped past the authority’s watchful eyes.

“Well, that’s _good_ ,” Stiles says. “I mean, now, since she’s trying to kill you and everything. It’s nicer if I don’t have to figure out how to get someone to ward the entire outpost against psychotic hunters.”

Derek barks out a laugh that’s decidedly mirthless, and isn’t even sure why.

“What I don’t understand,” Stiles continues, flipping more pages and making small notes in the margins with a red pen sporting a cap nearly completely chewed through - a nervous habit, maybe, or a way to keep his focus while he’s studying, “is why a hunter that managed to infiltrate a wolf pack wouldn’t just kill you all immediately.”

“It’s not that easy,” Derek says, and wishes he could stop talking. Telling this man, this _boy_ , about his family is causing the wound inside to rub raw, open and bleeding again. “You can’t just - you can’t just sneak up on an entire pack. You have to know how to catch them unaware, with their guard down.”

Stiles is watching him when Derek looks back over, though his expression is very neutral. “I see,” he says.

There’s a long second of nothing.

“Emissaries,” Stiles starts, and trails off.

“Have abilities,” Derek shuts his eyes. Staring at the blackness behind his eyelids, he can see the flames once again. “The position grants them Old Powers, from the first people who took the roles.”

“Druids,” Stiles says.

Derek nods, and hopes that it’s enough. He hears the pen scratching against the page, and Stiles’ heartbeat - it’s somewhat erratic, but not jumping as if with a lie. The rhythm seems to be perpetually off, a half-step for every normal beat.

“So Kate Argent has access to that,” Stiles complete the blank. “She’s going to be able to use those against you. And us. And anyone else she wants to destroy, or whatever.”

He can’t answer. There’s a weight on his chest, sitting on him, drawing the air from his lungs until he’s aching with need for it.

“But,” Derek starts, and then stops. He can’t. He can’t possibly, not to Stiles, not now; not in this place with its barren white walls and leather reinforced with mountain ash to keep him tied down. This isn’t safe, because _nothing_ is safe, not anymore - not for him. He clamps his mouth shut so hard he nearly bites his own tongue.

Stiles looks at him, _hard_ , but doesn't push the matter, and Derek thanks whatever deity has control of his life for small favors.

"She's after you," he says, in a way that isn't a question.

"Yes."

"Why?"

Derek breathes in, tries to steady himself again. He thinks of her mouth against his own, hot and claiming and damning, of the way she would perch on top of him and grind down, thighs flush and fingers needily digging into his arms. He can't tell Stiles that it's because he got away, because she thought he was _hers_ and now he isn't; that she used him to kill everyone he's ever loved and needs to finish the job.

"Because," is what he finally says, knowing that he has to say at least something.

"That's not really-" Stiles starts, shaking his head.

"She's a hunter," Derek says. "Does she need any other reason than that?"

There's another pronounced pause, and Stiles says, quietly, "No, I guess not."

"You need to let me go," Derek tries, and he's starting to feel more of that welling desperation. He has to get out - he's being tied up, held down, and now that his body has healed, it feels like being caged. "Just let me go, and I swear, I won't kill you, or tell anyone about you."

"Whoa," Stiles tells him, holding up his hands - the pen rolls across the notebook and clatters to the floor. "I'm not worried about you telling anyone about us, or any of that. I'm trying to _help_."

"I don't need help from a human," Derek chokes out through grit teeth.

"Yeah, I mean, I can get where that feeling comes from," Stiles says, and Derek can _hear_ the wave of sympathy, feels himself bristle from it. Stiles reaches down with nimble fingers to grab the fallen writing instrument, and then straightens. "But, I mean, everyone could use some allies, right? And we're not your enemies."

Derek doesn't answer.

"Are you hungry?" Stiles asks, rising to his feet.

"I ate."

"Yeah, well... okay," the other man says. "Look, I'm not sure you understand, we really aren't going to-"

He's cut short by the sharp, high-pitched blare of an alarm. It's set for humans and so loud that it feels like it cuts right through to Derek's bones, shrill and painful. He winces instinctively, but Stiles bolts upright, as if every nerve in his body has suddenly been turned on edge.

"What-" he breathes.

"I told you," Derek says, with all the heaviness of horrible actualization settling deep in his abdomen. "You should have let me leave."

Stiles scrambles around, fumbling for a switch on the wall that Derek hadn't been able to identify earlier, and now realizes is their communication device, built into the walls and set nearly flat against them. "Lydia!" he barks, and he sounds very different now. Something inside him has shifted. "What's going on?"

"Guerillas," her voice comes over the radio, laced with static. "And they're being pursued - looks like Coalition officers behind them."

Stiles glances back, at Derek, and something in his expression reads smug, a non-verbal _I told you so_ ; it's hard to internalize as Derek is struggling to realize that the fighting has nothing to do with him at all.

 _The Alliance is gaining members,_ Laura had set, during one of the last conversations they'd had while on the run, while in and out of unused territory and friendly outposts they had confirmation on, and she'd been angry, wanted them to help. Her face had been hard lines and determination etched deep, furious at what was happening and the pack's insistence on staying out of it, in the forest where they had spent a decade evading the officials. _These are our people, and we can't let them die in vain._

In the strange prison, Stiles is on his feet and rounding the table Derek's being held down on. Derek expects the second wrist restraint to be reattached, and instead, he hears the click of the one remaining one releasing.

"Why-" he starts.

"We need you," Stiles tells him, quick and perfunctory, sparing him only one more glance-over before turning and going towards the door. "There are only two of us right now, and both sides are going to try and use this place as a sanctuary."

When Derek stands, his legs are shaky from a night spent repairing broken skin and too long in disuse. He doesn't have to focus much in order to start the shift - he _wants_ to give in to the wolf, because it's easier. The pain is less when his human emotions are dulled, pushed aside for decades of instincts and automatic behavior.

"You want me to fight for you," Derek says, dully, because the thought of it is incredulous.

Stiles' eyebrows rise high, his shoulder hitting the doorframe a bit. "I want you to help keep us alive. Think of it as returning the favor. What do you think the Coalition is going to do if they find we've been harboring a fugitive werewolf?"

Derek's claws come out with a _shick_ -sound. He can hear what's going on outside now; even with the walls, with the recessed room that's sunk low in the earth, they must be getting closer, because he can hear the sound of human shouts and weapons being loaded. His wolf can sense the others - there are two, one male and one female, and both of them betas.

He wonders if Stiles will let him go if he refuses to help the outpost. But Stiles is gone, already on the move, seemingly unable to waste any more time speaking with their guest, and Derek is faced with the decision to stay and help them, or cut and run.

His wolf howls, but human, he sighs, and shifts to beta form, taking the steps up to the surface two at a time.

\--

Outside, it's a firefight. Derek knows the tactical advantage of having the outpost - both sides want to claim it as theirs, to use it, and as he suspects Lydia and Stiles will refuse to do so - though if they did, he has the nagging suspicion that they would concede to the _werewolves_ rather than the Coalition - but because it stands neutral and vulnerable, it's a prime target. The werewolves have fully shifted and are fighting, a clash of claws and teeth and anger at being pursued by the hunters. They're strong, and desperation lends an edge to any battle, but they're also tired, and Derek can smell their exhaustion coming off them in waves - this isn't their first fight, and they have probably been followed by the hunters for weeks, at least.

He doesn't like fighting alongside wolves he doesn't know. Falling in line with them will feel too much like assuming command, and there's a sharp pang in his chest when he thinks about them deferring to him as an alpha. He doesn't want to be the alpha for anyone, he wasn't _supposed_ to be, and to lead anyone other than his family - Derek shakes the thought away, trying to reorient himself. He has to do something. The Coalition will quickly override Stiles and Lydia's neutral position and claim the outpost as their own.

If they find him, they'll send him back to Kate, no questions asked.

The werewolves are caught up in the fight, they don't notice him right away. It's a testament to how tired they are, how ragged they've been run, that they don't immediately _sense_ him there; instead, Derek gets up behind them, and when one of them falters against a hunter, he jumps in with claws extended.

There's a shout of surprise from the Coalition group, but the first werewolf, the man, is already dead, cut across the middle nearly all the way with the sword that was too quick. Derek gets the hunter responsible hard in the shoulder and he goes down, but there are several others clustered around - too many.

He ducks low to avoid another hunter's knife, and he can hear it whizz over his head through the air. He swings his leg and trips the man, and then the female werewolf launches herself in the air, burying all ten claws in the hunter's chest. Two down.

Derek hears the rifle at almost the same time as he _sees_ it happening - across the way, around the corner of the building, a cluster of hunters are crouched and aiming. One bullet goes wide, but the other gets him in the leg. He howls and moves, hoping to find some cover before all of them can get their shots off. The other werewolf tries to follow, and is quickly hit in the side with another round. She goes down, hard, and Derek can smell her blood already mingling with the poison - wolfs bane.

She's lost, or will be soon enough. Derek can't find shelter to avoid the spray of bullets, and his heart leaps in his chest. Better to go down fighting than run down by Coalition officers, looking for an easy kill.

He turns and starts to move, figuring he'll be able to avoid the gunfire long enough to get at least one good swipe at the hunters, and that's when he notices Lydia running out of the building, hair an orange banner behind her.

"Stop!" she cries, with more command than she should be able to claim.

The hunters ignore her. Derek can see them loading the rifles again, bullets brought out from boxes. He's got a second, maybe two, before they finish and aim at him, and he tries to increase his speed. He won't make it. They are too far away, and his body is still furiously sluggish from his injuries earlier.

Lydia opens her mouth, and screams.

Derek doesn't just hear it; he _feels_ it, all the way down to his bones, buzzing in his veins and setting his nerves on fire. It stops him out of shock, because he's never felt anything that strong before - there's magic there, in her voice, mingled with the sound, and he sputters down to the ground without knowing what to make of it.

One of the hunters shouts in alarm, and his rifle misfires at the ground, exploding with backlash that shoots him into the building wall. Another drops his weapon entirely, hands going to cover his ears. Derek can hear the pop-pop of the rifle disarming itself, clattering to the ground; it's good, but the last one keeps his wits about him.

Derek lets himself shift fully, into his alpha form, into the body of the wolf that is bigger and stronger but not wholly under his control, because it's too new. He lunges and he still won't make it, even with the time Lydia has bought him.

The hunter goes down from an arrow in his chest, lodged deep.

Without letting himself wonder how or why, Derek leaps on the others. They are easy to kill with the alpha buzz beneath his skin - it propels him forward with a ferocity and instinct that he could get lost in. He _wants_ to lose himself, and nearly does, except that as the sharp smell of the hunters' blood starts to overpower his senses, he feels another werewolf behind him.

He turns, snarls, and pins the other wolf to the ground.

"Whoa!" he hears, dimly, as he snaps his jaw. The new wolf isn't either of the ones Derek saw go down from the hunters - this one is new, and growling in anger beneath him, trembling with shocks that Derek can feel through the pads of his paws.

"Stop, stop-" it's Stiles, something that registers dimly in the human part of Derek's mind. There are hands against his flank, and he's amazed that Stiles is _touching_ him, when he could be mad or feral or too lost in the wolf to know what he's doing. Stiles drags him back as best he can, and Derek steps off the new werewolf's chest, allowing the man up.

"Okay, this is Scott," Stiles says, and maybe he's said it before, maybe he's repeating. Derek looks at the new wolf and tells himself _Scott_ , trying to put the name into his memory bank. Stiles leans in to help Scott up, and Scott's features smooth back into normalcy. He's also young, the same age as Stiles and Lydia, perhaps, and oddly disarming. "Scott is our friend, okay? Don't kill him, he's one of us, he's part of the outpost crew here-"

"He's a werewolf," Derek interrupts, still somewhat stunned; when he'd thought that he'd found sympathizers, he didn't know he'd found _active rebels_.

"So are you," Scott huffs.

Derek turns to Stiles, and focuses behind him, to Lydia, still standing near the door with her hands clenched into fists at her sides. "And you - you're not _human_."

"Well, not _technically_..." Stiles begins, looking a bit sheepish.

"What is this place?" Derek growls - he's feeling ambushed and confused, both wolf and human overloaded and floundering, trying to find solid footing. "Who _are_ you?"

After a long second, Scott thrusts a hand forward in a strange, awkward-looking handshake. "But not here," he says, like it's a response.

"Inside," Lydia agrees, "and I'll get Allison, too."

Derek stares down at Scott's hand, unsure - Scott's a beta, obviously, but he doesn't seem to have any connection to an alpha, and Derek isn't sure how he hasn't picked up the omega vibes. He isn't sure what to do, or what to make of it. They stand there long enough without moving that Stiles seems to get antsy, wringing his hands a bit in front of his form.

"I swear, he's one of us," Stiles says, and with a start, Derek realizes that Stiles is speaking to _him_. "Just - c'mon, let's go in, and we can explain."

Scott drops his hands, gaze fixed on Derek's.

"Okay?" Scott tries, sounding unsure.

"Okay," Derek echoes.

\--

They don't make Derek go back to the sterile basement. Instead, he goes with the rest of them to what appears to be a makeshift meeting room - obviously built for something else, in an outpost that had no real need of strategizing on its own, and converted with a worn-looking wooden table and a handful of folding chairs. Derek sits down gingerly, unsure about everything, and tries to take in the scene around him. The last time he trusted a human... well.

He vows never to make that mistake again, bile rising hot in the back of his throat.

"I told you this outpost wasn't going to turn you in," Stiles starts, before he's even all the way in his own seat, like his mouth is running away from him.

"This is why," Derek finishes for him, and it's not a question. "You have a rogue werewolf."

"I'm not a _rogue_ ," Scott says, immediately, and Derek can't hear a lie in his heartbeat, though that could just mean that Scott truly believes it.

Derek snorts. "A beta without an alpha is, by definition, a rogue werewolf."

"Well, yeah, but he's not like that," Stiles says. "He's like... he has us. As a pack."

"You're human," Derek points out. He doesn't say the rest of what he wants to say - that humans aren't _pack_ , that it doesn't just work like that; that a pack is more than a family, it's a cohesive unit, operating as a single entity for the good of everyone. That it's _bone-deep_ and in your blood.

"And you're an alpha," Scott snips, obviously still smarting, "without a pack."

He doesn't _know_ \- the human side of Derek understands this. Scott wasn't here when Derek choked out pieces of his painful past, but it still hurts, stings, all the way to his core. He bristles, and, surprisingly enough, so does Stiles, who has the good sense to look abashed at his friend's comment.

"That's only because the Argents killed his pack," Stiles says, and it's stupid that Derek is letting some kid spill his secrets for him. As soon as the words leave Stiles' mouth, the boy clamps up again, eyes going wide and traveling down the table towards the end, where Lydia and a girl with dark ringlets are sitting.

The new girl - Allison, if Derek remembers correctly - seems to straighten a bit, and Derek can hear a _blip-blip_ of fear quicken her heart. "The Argents did? Why?"

"Because they're hunters," Derek says into the table. He wants to hide. This wasn't supposed to happen - he isn't supposed to be sitting here, at a table surrounded by children playing at adulthood. He's supposed to be running, escaping, and then finding somewhere to drown his guilt in private, to tear himself apart seam by seam with it until there's nothing left but the regret eating him alive. "It's what they do, and we were free werewolves."

"You said that Kate was your emissary," Stiles repeats.

It hurts to swallow. "She was."

"How does an Argent become the emissary to a pack of free werewolves?" Scott asks, with more sincere curiosity than Derek can handle hearing in his tone. "Especially in this day and age, I mean the name alone-"

"She didn't tell us her real name," Derek says, forcing it down - all of it, every last bit except for the information he needs. If he tells them the truth, enough of it, maybe they will let him go. "And she... she was vouched for. By a member of the pack. It was enough."

The others look at him, accepting this, but Stiles' eyes are searching and Derek doesn't like the way they seem to see straight through him as they rove.

"It's better to have an emissary, isn't it?" Lydia asks.

"Yes," Derek runs his tongue over his bottom lip, which has gone as dry as his mouth. "It's safer. Humans can access magic that we can't."

"Magic you need," Lydia continues.

"Magic to help us _hide_ ," Derek says.

Scott's feet are drumming out a nervous pattern against the floor, and it sounds like thunder in Derek's ears. "I guess that's pretty important with the Coalition holding the reins."

"Derek," Stiles says, quietly, almost too soft, as if he's speaking for Derek alone even though Scott would pick it up just as easily, "what's your last name?"

It used to be important to keep it quiet, not to give it to hunters or humans. It used to _mean_ something, mean that they were still free, that they hadn't been gunned down in the wake of the war. But now it doesn't matter, because Derek was the one that doomed them all.

"Hale."

At the end of the table, Allison gasps, barely audible; both Derek and Scott look up at the same moment.

"Do you-?" Stiles says, at the exact moment that Scott reaches out with one hand towards her, arm on the table, and starts, "Are you sure-?"

Allison ignores both of them. She stares at Derek, and there are too many emotions in her gaze to every try to unwind. She's afraid, and he can hear it in the erratic beating of her heart, but still, she doesn't waver. She doesn't look away.

"My name is Allison," she starts, "Argent. Kate Argent is my aunt."

Derek's blood runs cold. Scott's fingers, like nimble traitors, curl around Allison's.

"She killed my whole-" Derek starts, before he even realizes that he's speaking; if he'd had a choice, he would have stayed silent and shifted, given in to the wolf. Maybe allowed his instincts to tear her throat out just to feel some semblance of balance restored - family for family, life for life, death for death.

"No," Allison interrupts, and he's furious, _ready_ , if this is his last stand then so be it, until she adds, "Derek, your sister is alive."

\--

"Derek," Stiles says, behind him, in the doorway. Derek can hear the thudding of his heart, even over the rush of his own blood against his ears - his mind keeps repeating _Cora's alive, Cora's alive_ until there's nothing else, nothing left. How she escaped, he doesn't know. He doesn't know if Kate's had her the whole time or not, but he guesses not; if she had, he would have thought she'd used it while taunting Laura and Derek when she caught up with them again, just to shove it in their faces.

"Don't," Derek tries. He'll wait until nightfall, because he moves best under the cover of darkness, when his instincts are heightened and the moon is singing in his veins. He'll work his way back, try to find where Kate is. She won't be in the same place, where she tracked them down and killed Laura, but he'll find her.

"It's a trap," Stiles says. "Or, at least, it will be once _she_ knows that _you_ know about Cora."

"Of _course_ it's a trap," Derek growls, "but what do you want me to do? She has my _sister_ , and I'm not giving up on her."

Stiles steps in, brave and foolish, because Derek could tear his vocal cords out with a single sweep of his claws. His heartbeat doesn't sound scared - there's something else to it, something like iron. "Well, maybe _planning_ would be a good start."

"What do you want from me?" Derek whirls, voice louder than he planned. He gives Stiles credit for only barely flinching and not stepping back, even when he should have. He doesn't know Derek. He doesn't know what Derek is capable of, the destruction he brings. "I'm _leaving_ , and I shouldn't have been here at all, and-"

"And I'm going with you," Stiles says.

Derek starts. "No."

"Uh, _yes_ ," Stiles says.

"You have to be joking."

"Often," Stiles admits, and looks very serious, crossing his arms over his chest, "but not this time. You've got a day or two, maybe, before she tries to bait you into going there because of Cora, and you need backup to figure out your best plan of attack."

"You're human," Derek snaps, like it's an insult - maybe it is. He's never known, never been sure.

Stiles rolls his eyes. "Thanks, Einstein, I hadn't known that. Yes, I'm human, and that's why you need me."

"So you can get killed?" Derek asks.

"So I can keep _you_ from getting killed!" Stiles exclaims, and finally, he spreads his arms to either side, heartbeat speeding up. He's angry, now, eyes narrowed and brow furrowed. "Jesus, do you seriously have a _death_ wish? I know you blame yourself-"

"Don't you dare," Derek seethes, teeth clenched. "Don't you dare talk to me like-"

"Like you _are_ blaming yourself?" Stiles interrupts. He takes a step in, all bluster and stupid, stupid courage, this kid who lives on the cusp of the edge, hovering just out of arm's reach of both sides that might want him dead. "Because you are. And you shouldn't be."

For a second, Derek can't even breathe. "It's my fault."

"Look, I don't even know the specifics, and I can assure you that it wasn't," Stiles says. "I know Allison's family. I mean, not personally, but, dude, I know what they're like. Whatever she did or said to you, she would have done it no matter what, because that's the kind of power they have."

Derek's knees go out. Suddenly, he's exhausted. He's been running for weeks and it's catching up with him all at once, a screaming train to his chest. "Stop," he tries, but it's weak, and they both know it.

"Sorry it'll just be me, man, but we can't leave the outpost defenseless," Stiles says, and shrugs, oddly, in the absence of anything else to do.

"Why?" Derek asks. His mouth is dry again, cotton balls and exhaustion. "Why do you care?"

"Because I watched what Scott went through when he got bit," Stiles answers, immediately. Maybe he had the whole thing prepared, was waiting to get to this part. "Because I know you're not the bad guys here, no matter what the Coalition says. Because I think it's shitty as fuck to kill innocent people for things they can't help being born with. Because I've lost people, too, and I understand. Because you need somebody human to figure shit out, to track where Kate is holding your sister, to be the go-between that you can't possibly be. Because I don't want you to die, despite your _amazing_ people and communication skills, and your incredibly uplifting personality."

Derek barks out a laugh that hurts when he leaves his lips. "You don't know me."

Stiles just stares at him with that gaze that sees far, far too much. "Not yet," he says, and it's only half an agreement.

He isn't sure why it doesn't bother him more that he realizes he won't get out of there alone.

\--

Stiles spends half an hour loading boxes of books - for research purposes, Derek can only assume - into the back of the truck, as well as some old GPS equipment that he claims was "from the first cell phone systems".

The others are there, too, clustered around, and Derek can sense the rolling waves of emotions from their heartbeats. He expects Allison to keep her distance, and is surprised when she is the first to approach him, wrapping her arms around herself but keeping her shoulders squared.

"Last I heard," she says, loud enough that Stiles can hear it, too, "Kate and Gerard were east of Seattle, out near the reserves there."

"Gerard?" Stiles asks, so Derek won't have to.

Allison shrugs. "My grandfather. I've only met him a few times, and only when I was really little. But it's your best bet since it's their last known location."

"Would they keep her mobile?" Stiles asks, and this time, spares a glance at Derek. "Or would they set up something they could guard constantly, waiting for Derek to get there?"

"I don't know," Allison replies.

Stiles doesn't ask the question that is lodging itself in Derek's throat and burning a hole there - _are they torturing her?_. He can't bring himself to voice it aloud, and if Allison's miserable expression is anything to go by, it's on her mind, too.

"I'm sorry," she adds, though Derek isn't sure exactly what she's apologizing for. "And good luck."

She slides back, shoulder-to-shoulder with Scott, who seems adorably concerned as he sticks his hand out. There aren't any hard feelings, it seems, and he's the strangest kind of werewolf that Derek has ever known: big-hearted, wide-eyed, optimistic. Maybe it's because Derek has never actually met a bitten werewolf before. Maybe there's a lingering bit of human naïveté that remains, even after the moon has taken hold.

"I hope you find your sister," Scott says, sincere, and Derek almost believes him.

When they get into the car - a blue Jeep that has seen better days and Derek isn't sure will even _make_ it to Seattle - Derek stares at the dust accumulated on the dash board and says, "When we find her, I'm going to kill her."

Stiles just looks at him, sideways, and slides the keys in the ignition. "Yeah."

"Don't tell Allison that."

The other boy barks out a bitter laugh. "Dude, she already knows."

\--

It takes a few hours before Stiles starts asking questions, and Derek can only imagine that it was torture to hold back for as long as he has.

"How much information were you getting as a free pack?" the boy asks, and steadfastly keeps his eyes on the road.

"Enough," Derek replies; he doesn't want to talk about his time before Kate. The time when his family was still alive and he wasn't burdened with the knowledge that they died through his own actions. It was an easier time, even being on the run.

"So you know about the fighting for power between the Coalition and the Free Alliance?"

Derek shifts, the seatbelt digging uncomfortably into his side - it's worth it to see the trees fly by out the window, and to imagine that he is running through the woods with Laura again. "It doesn't matter."

"What do you mean it doesn't matter?" Stiles scoffs. "This is _huge_. If the Coalition manages to stay in power, they'll kill all of you. And they won't just stop there, they'll kill everyone who helped a werewolf. Everyone who _thought_ about helping a werewolf. Everyone is going to be _dead_."

"Everyone already is," Derek can't stop himself from replying.

Stiles falls silent at that. Derek hopes that he's stunned the other into quiet for the rest of the ride, but he should have known better. He gets only a few minutes of peace before Stiles says, with his eyes still glued to the cement and his knuckles white against the top of the steering wheel," You vouched for her, didn't you."

It isn't a question, but Derek doesn't understand where it fits in.

"What?"

Stiles does a one-shoulder shrug, and his eyes flicker over to Derek's face. "Back at the outpost, you said that Kate became your emissary because someone in the pack vouched for her. It was you, right?"

Derek doesn't answer.

"It wasn't your fault," Stiles says.

"You don't know anything," Derek snarls, and wishes he sounds far more menacing than he really does. It lacks heart, and it's obvious; Stiles' heartbeat doesn't even stutter at the display.

"Were you in love with her?" Stiles asks, quieter.

The trees outside seem to bend and curl as they flash by the side of the Jeep's windows. Derek lets his forehead fall against the window pane, bouncing softly against the glass with the car's movement.

"What do you know about emissary bonds?" he asks back, instead of letting any of the other things past his lips threatening to fall.

Stiles seems a little thrown by the change in conversation topic. "You mean, like, to the pack?"

"Becoming an emissary is a ritual, an old one," Derek says. Somehow, this feels like more solid ground. He thinks about his father, and the low timber of the man's voice when he had begun reciting stories and lore. "You go through it, and that's it. It's magical, and it's there, and it doesn't take anything else. It doesn't matter if you are only doing it to murder everyone later - as long as the ritual is done, it's complete."

"Okay," Stiles says, slowly.

"But a bond can occur between the emissary and one within the pack, and that can make the emissary stronger."

Suddenly, Stiles seems to catch on. "You mean a _romantic_ bond. Wouldn't that also just be a ritual?"

"No," Derek replies, voice soft. Against the window, his breath is making round puffs of clouds, only to have them fade away again.

"Why are you telling me this?"

Again, Derek stays silent. He has already learned that even if he fails to respond to the queries, Stiles will work things out anyway. There's something very calculating about his brain, and it should make Derek uncomfortable; maybe he's too exhausted to be uncomfortable anymore.

"I see," Stiles says, and with his realization, the car jerks a bit, too responsive beneath his unstable hands. "She's bonded."

"She's half-bonded," Derek whispers.

"Why only halfway?"

Derek lifts his head from the window and looks at Stiles, too tired to disguise everything he knows must be evident on his features. "You can't fake that sort of magic. You have to mean it, or else it won't happen. But bonds are formed from both sides."

"Derek, this isn't your fault," Stiles says.

Derek laughs. "Isn't it?"

"You were in love with her," the boy says, all statement and no doubt.

"I was," Derek sighs, and lets that say whatever Stiles wants to read into it.

\--

They stop when it gets dark more for Stiles than anything else. Stiles insists that they still aren't entirely sure where to go, and even getting halfway through Oregon isn't going to help without a plan of attack. He does, however, have locations pinpointed of abandoned outposts that he "thinks" are structurally sound enough to keep them dry and somewhat warm during the night.

Derek doesn't say anything about his general opinion on what Stiles thinks, but it seems to be obvious anyway.

"Don't even," Stiles says, through a mouthful of dried rations that appear difficult to completely chew through. "We don't have a lot of resources at our disposal because the Coalition is still severely limiting correspondence, but we've got a few contacts who feed us some pretty reliable information."

"All this because your friend got bitten?" Derek muses - a life always hiding under the radar and operating below the table isn't something he guesses that most teenagers would jump at the chance for.

Stiles swallows his mouthful of food, and levels Derek with a strong look. "He's my _best_ friend, so yeah. And also the thing about how killing people is shitty, and the Coalition and its hunters are gigantic dicks, so."

Derek wants to avoid the rest of this conversation. Being stuck in a small structure with a kid who can't seem to keep his mouth shut (even while eating) is pretty far down on the list of things Derek wanted to do this month.

"You brought a lot of books," he says, hoping to steer the conversation in a different direction. "What are they for?"

"Well, I need to know what I'm up against," is Stiles' somewhat enigmatic response.

"I've told you what Kate is and what she can do."

"Actually," Stiles points out, and drags one of the books in question onto his lap - a big, thick tome that sports yellowing page edges and a leather-engraved cover, no doubt something highly illegal if his comments about the Coalition's iron grip are to be believed, "you really haven't told me _anything_ that she can do."

 _Besides kill people_ seems to go unvoiced.

"It would be super _helpful_ if maybe you could get more specific with what magic comes along with being an emissary," Stiles continues. Crumbs from his dehydrated meal cluster along the binding of the book .

"A lot of what she can do revolves around other werewolves," Derek admits. "Emissaries are typically the ones who deal with the things we can't - like mountain ash."

"Right, that would make sense," Stiles says. "But I'm not a werewolf, so I'll be able to avoid that, right?"

Derek stares down at dirt embedded in his palms. "There are weapons she has that will still be toxic to you, even as a human. Nightshade, mistletoe."

"Anyone can use those, they're just herbs."

"Herbs that react to magical stimulation," Derek says.

Stiles sighs, sounding weary. "So they're like amplifiers. Great. How about other things she can do - conjuring, telepathy?"

"Stiles, no one can conjure the dead, you've watched too many horror movies."

"But _you_ know enough to say that!" Stiles cries, triumphant, and holds up a finger like a tally mark. "I thought you lived in the woods?"

"We didn't always have to live in the woods," Derek says.

Stiles deflates visibly. "Right," he mumbles, and looks back down at the book. "How long were you there?"

Derek can still remember his house, inside town - the house his grandfather had built on their land, land that ran adjacent to the national park and gave them acres of forest to run through when the moon was full. He can still remember the front gate and the fence his father had made him help fix after a bad storm; he can still remember his mother tending the garden in the back, because she said that home-grown vegetables tasted better than the ones in the supermarket.

He tries to force those memories down, because they aren't going to do him any good. "We moved there when I was ten."

"Jesus," Stiles says, and he's looking at Derek now, eyes narrowed and oddly sympathetic. "You're, what, 21? 22? You lived in the forests as a free pack for over ten years?"

"It was either that, or be corralled," Derek replies.

"Before the war, then," Stiles says.

"No," Derek shakes his head. "We were always at war."

\--

On the second day, Allison radios in through a wireless phone that Stiles claims is "totally prepaid and untraceable", though Derek isn't sure how much Kate would be looking into that anyway.

"My dad mentioned that they had moved a bit north," she says, without much of a greeting, and Derek wonders if him being there has caused her to alter the way she talks to Stiles. "Up into central Washington."

There are miles and miles of forest in Washington, virtually untouched by the war raging everywhere else. Tactically, it's a good idea to stay off the Coalition's radar, and it's also a good place to launch an impressive ambush.

Stiles seems to be thinking the same thing, because he glances over at Derek and shrugs, a bit helpless. "It's a lotta ground to cover. Think you can sniff your sister out?"

"Not from here," Derek says, and for some reason, this makes Stiles laugh.

They drive for awhile in silence. Derek thinks about what he wants to do to Kate once he gets his hands on her again, and then can't figure out why his hands are shaking in his lap.

They stop to eat, and because Stiles is complaining that his butt is tired.

"So, remember when we were talking about emissaries?" he asks, munching on some nuts he pulls from a small, clear bag. His gaze doesn't meet Derek's; it's lost somewhere past the Jeep, past the trees, in a place Derek can't touch. "What would be, like, the most powerful thing ever?"

"A spark," Derek answers. "Someone with magical abilities already."

"And someone bonded," Stiles adds.

Derek nods. "That would probably be the most powerful combination possible, given the limitations of being an emissary."

"Have you ever seen one of those?"

"I've never even heard of one," Derek admits. "It's just a guess. But then again, I didn't really have a lot of potlucks with other werewolf packs, so I wasn't exposed to that much."

Stiles cracks a lopsided smile. "You know, you're pretty funny. You don't look like you would be, but you pull it out at the most random times."

Derek isn't sure what sort of response is necessary to that, so he says nothing. Stiles eats half the bag of nuts and offers Derek the other half. They aren't bad, but they could use some salt.

"What do you mean about the limitations of being an emissary?" he then asks.

"They aren't all-powerful," Derek says.

"But they're powerful enough, huh? Enough that Kate wanted to tap into that power."

Derek finishes the snack and crumbles the plastic bag between his hands. "Don't you have books for this sort of thing?" he grumbles.

"You're like my very own Wikipedia page," Stiles says, and flashes Derek another grin before jumping off the park bench and pulling the keys out of his pockets. "But let's keep moving, because this whole thing is making me a bit jumpy."

\--

They sleep in the Jeep that night because they can't find anywhere else, and Derek is woken in the darkness with a crick in his neck from the awkward position in the reclined seat.

There are also people outside, circling the vehicle and muttering in tones Derek can still pick up through the metal and glass: hunters. He isn't sure if it's Kate, but he knows they are dangerous, and without really thinking about it, he leaps out of the car already shifted to full Alpha mode, growling and letting the wolf take over.

He's got one of them down, throat torn out, before the others really registered that he's awake and moving. Then there are shouts, and guns being cocked, and he can hear, above the cacophony of noise, Stiles stumbling out of the Jeep after him in a stupid, fool-hardy move.

"Shit!" the boy cries, and it's more angry than fearful, like he's furious with himself for allowing them to be so careless.

Derek just hopes the kid can take care of himself. He jumps onto another hunter, ignoring the sharp stab of pain in his side where the man's knife slides in; it's nothing but normal steel, but it still hurts like hell, even as Derek tugs it free and throws it, letting his claws sink deep into the man's arm. The hunter yells, and spins, and somewhere in it, comes out with a bag of mountain ash. When he tosses it in Derek's direction, the sting of it hits him directly in the face.

He goes down hard. The hunter finds his knife again, somehow, or he had another one - Derek can't really tell, because the dust is burning his eyes and he can't claw it out. He draws in a ragged, wheezing breath. It's annoying to get rid of, but in a fight, it can be deadly, costing him valuable seconds where he can't see.

Behind him, there's the sound of a shot being fired, and when Derek isn't immediately hit, he freezes in terror: Stiles. If he wasn't the target, then the other man surely was. And Derek was the one who got him into this mess in the first place.

He roars and turns, scraping long, jagged lines down the hunter's chest with his claws, and seeks out Stiles using scent alone, his vision still red and stinging and blurry.

Then he launches himself forward with all the coiled muscles his form allows, taking the last hunter down by the shoulders and the bulk of his weight. It should bother him, the sound of the man's spine breaking, but it doesn't. His eyes are finally clearing, and he sees Stiles in front of him - eyes wide, chest heaving, heart pounding.

"Jesus," the boy says, babbling, seemingly frozen. "He was going to shoot me, I really think he was going to shoot me - holy shit, man, I'm not... I'm not a werewolf, why was he going to shoot me?"

Derek lets himself sink back into his human form. It feels strange for a second, like the wrong skin on his body. "You were with me, and that's all they needed to know."

"They didn't even _check_ ," Stiles starts, and then cuts himself off. There's a moment of nothing before he pushes himself off the ground. In the second, his heart rate steadies.

He turns to Derek. "They got the jump on us."

"Yeah," Derek says, looking around at the bodies. They'll have to just leave them, or risk running into a search party, or a second wave. Only three hunters, and they are too far out for them to be alone - they came from something bigger, something well-equipped.

"We should have seen that coming, or had a way to track them, or something."

Derek doesn't answer. Stiles seems to be simply talking out loud, and he's only half-listening. He starts, however, when he hears the next part: "I think it's about time we talk about me becoming your new emissary."

\--

"Derek, just think about it."

"No."

"I'm serious, you need to realize what a disadvantage-"

"I'm not having this conversation with you."

"Now?" Stiles asks, with knuckles white against the steering wheel. "Or, like, ever? Dude, I'm being serious. I can't do anything here unless you _let me_ help you. And I know you don't want to let anyone else in because they might hurt you-"

"That's not it," Derek says, and immediately wishes he hadn't. The traitorous, horrible part of him - the human part, the part he can't will away with his instincts even when the moon is full and overhead - is winning, and he tries to push it back down. This can't be something that happens. He's projecting. It's _human_ , but it has to be stopped.

"What do you mean that's not it? You don't trust me, you don't want me having that much power over you-"

"I'm not afraid of getting hurt again," Derek growls, frustrated with himself and the conversation happening around him.

Stiles is silent for a long moment. "You aren't?"

"There's nothing left to lose," he murmurs, against the glass, and wishes he could just shift and run. "It doesn't matter if I don't trust you."

"Do you?" Stiles asks, harsh, and nearly runs the Jeep off the road with the force of it. He glares at Derek across the seats. "Trust me? Do you trust me?"

Derek wants to lie. He's never been good at it around those who can hear his heartbeat, but this kid doesn't know the first thing about reading it. He could lie. He _should_ lie. Instead, he says: "Yes."

"Oh," Stiles says. He seems surprised - maybe he wasn't expecting that answer. If he's being honest, Derek wasn't either. "Then why not? I have to be able to do something here, Derek, and there isn't much without letting me into the whole mess."

"That's the point," Derek replies. He's very tired. "I can't let you into this whole mess. You'll get hurt."

"Oh, fuck this," Stiles says. He jerks the steering wheel to one side and hits the brake. The force of it sends Derek forward, his chest catching on the seatbelt, which aches a bit; Stiles has barely gotten the Jeep in park before he is out, kicking against the door and angrily stalking off into the woods.

Which aren't safe, for either of them, and Derek appears to be the only person who seems to realize this.

"Stiles!" he barks, and goes out after him. "Stiles, what the hell-"

"You know, that's actually _not_ sexy," Stiles calls back over his shoulder, as he slams his foot down on an offending leaf. "That's not being chivalrous or protecting me, it's being a dick. What is that shit, anyway, the stuff that happens in fairy tales? Don't let the weak one make their own decision because _you_ decided that they might get hurt?"

Derek is lost. "I don't-"

Stiles whirls on him, finger up in the air and eyes sparking with anger. "You _don't_ get to make decisions like that for me, especially not after I _left_ my outpost to come with you and help. I'm already _in_ this, because I _chose_ to be, and you can't take that choice away from me because you have this misguided notion that you're allowed to do so. Capisce?"

"I - yeah," Derek says, and swallows hard.

It works, a bit, and Stiles deflates. He runs a hand through his unruly hair and seems to register his own weariness again, the lack of sleep and running on adrenaline since the hunters found them.

"I'm helping you," he repeats.

"I know you are," Derek says, and it's only barely over a whisper - he can't seem to get much else out.

When Stiles meets his gaze again, his whole face is set and hard. "What's the ritual?" he demands.

"It's not that hard," Derek tells him. "It doesn't require much."

"So what is that? Some herbs, mystical tea, what?"

Derek shrugs, feeling very unstable and a little lost, and strangely warm, the feeling blossoming out from his chest. He shouldn't be feeling that. He's taken this bet before, gambled his life on it, and lost - only he didn't have to pay the fee, it was everyone he loved. He shouldn't be doing this again. Letting people in has only ever proven that they will eventually let him down, turn on him, show their weakness in the worst possible ways.

Yet, against it all, he continues. "The same thing most things of this nature need: blood."

\--

The knife stings against his flesh. It stings almost as much as the realization that he's really doing this, which is a double-edged blade; he's doing this himself, because he's the alpha now, his family is dead. And he's doing this again, when everything in his past and his memory is telling him not to.

He tries to keep his hand steady as he holds it out. For some reason, he trusts this kid. This kid who is jittery and whose heartbeat is a mile a minute, this kid who is kind of a terrible driver and taps out the beat to unknown songs against the wheel when there's silence. This kid who smells like cloves and cinnamon, the sharp tang of changing leaves in the fall and the whisper of earth, clinging to shoes.

"Ouch," Stiles winces, face contorted almost comically. "Augh, god, I have a very low tolerance for pain."

"Then hurry up, or we'll have to do it again," Derek orders.

Stiles shoves his hand out in front of him, aligning his palm with Derek's own. Their blood mingles there between the skin. He can't feel anything different, but he knows that it doesn't mean anything. Magic like this is deeper than something tingling against his fingers.

"What now?" he asks, and then regrets it, looking like he's afraid asking has broken whatever spell they are creating around them.

"Do you accept the responsibilities and burdens of being an emissary?" Derek asks.

"Yes," Stiles says. His heartbeat doesn't skip.

"Then that's it," Derek tells him. "You've sworn through blood with an alpha."

Stiles looks a bit dubiously down at their still-clasped hands. "Shouldn't there be, I dunno, something else? I was expecting something more. Some kind of Latin? Expecto patronum or something?"

"This isn't Harry Potter, Stiles," Derek says, and lets go. His hand feels sticky and cold without the beat of another heart pressed against his palm.

"I so cannot believe you've even read that," Stiles grumbles. He tugs free a bit of gauze from the medical emergency kit and wraps it around his hand; Derek's flesh has already sealed up, but Stiles will deal with the sore wound for days. "I bet Lupin was your favorite character."

Derek doesn't bother to dignify that with a response, even if it's true.

"So I'm your emissary now," Stiles says. "What does that mean? Can I... do stuff?"

"You've got the books, right?" Derek asks. He doesn't know, this isn't his area of expertise. "Then, yeah, I guess you can do stuff. If you don't mind, starting with some kind of warding spell would really be the most helpful option."

"Way ahead of you," Stiles holds a hand up, the one not wrapped in gauze. "I've found a few that might work, very Supernatural-esque. All I need are to make some protective charms, and hopefully they warn us when people who mean us harm get near."

"A warning is all we'll need," Derek promises, and lets Stiles get to work, watching and occasionally helping find the bits of things in the boxes they brought with them that they'll need.

\--

They have to stop for a nap - Derek is worried about Stiles driving them off the road. They stop and Stiles sets up the protection charms, mistletoe and iron, an amplifying rod, and Derek just hopes it will work better than his own muddled senses do.

But Stiles can't seem to sleep, fuzzy in the in-between stages of exhaustion and fear. He rolls over and over, unable to get comfortable in the reclined seat, until he finally says, "I think my father is dead."

Derek freezes. There's no catch in Stiles' heartbeat; it's an old wound, beneath the skin, scabbed over but still raw beneath.

"I mean, I don't know. He was a sympathizer, you know?" Stiles continues, talking just to talk, curled up into a miserable ball between the gear shift and the door jam. "So, when those first laws started getting passed, as the Coalition took over the Senate, before... well, when there _was_ still government, before the military coup. My dad, he was trying to get people out. Canada was an okay option then."

"What happened to him?" Derek finds himself asking, mouth dry.

"I don't know," Stiles whispers. The admission, in the dark, to the world at large, is probably the most terrifying thing to say out loud. Saying it seems to make it true; saying it makes the guilt intensify. "He was taken. They found out he was running people through the last free routes, and then he was just... gone."

"And your mom?"

"Cancer," Stiles says, and this one sounds easier. He's used to talking about this one. "Before everything. It was slow, but... not. I guess it's never really slow. But she knew she was going."

Derek's heart aches. Between them both, there's a painful void where family is supposed to be, and there's nothing but blood and bullets there. Derek used to think that his family was the only thing affected by the war, by the prejudice, by the Coalition's attack on his entire kind. But he'd been wrong.

Stiles' heart is speeding up, working itself into a frenzy, and Derek just sort of panics. He reaches over without really knowing what to do, just trying to leech away some of the anxiety that is wafting off the boy in tense, angry waves; his hand connects with Stiles' arm, fingers curling around his bicep. He holds on, and tries to help.

The heartbeat slows beneath his touch.

"Thanks," Stiles rasps, face still turned away so that Derek can't see his expression - it's alright. Being stuck in a small vehicle together doesn't afford much privacy, and Derek can give him this small thing. "I'm sorry. I didn't - I haven't really told anyone else that, who didn't already know. About dad."

Derek can't do this. He can feel his heart giving out - giving in, cracking apart. He's learned nothing, he's gotten no smarter. His traitorous human instincts are going to drive him to ruin all over again, and he can't stop them. He wants to wrench his hand away, and the panic - maybe it's contagious. He can feel is creeping up through his ribcage, waiting to take him, too. For doing this again, for letting someone in. He sucks in a rattling, wheezing breath, and Stiles' fingers close around his, still hooked on Stiles' arm.

"Hey," Stiles says, and that's all. It helps, somehow.

"Hey," Derek echoes.

He thought he was alone, but he's not. Derek clings to the fact that there is someone else here with him, finding comfort in the uneven, erratic breathing under his palm. He tries to remember how to breathe himself, and it takes a long time for both of them to drift off to sleep.

\--

He dreams of the fire. He dreams of their screams, the sounds echoing in his head. He's trapped in the memories, but can't do anything about them to change it; he's on the outside, looking in, stuck behind a wall of glass that keeps him from charging in and saving them all. He slams his hands against, his shoulders, but can't get enough force to break through. He just watches them burn and shouts until his throat is raw.

Derek wakes up to Stiles shaking him. The boy's hands are tight around his shoulders, almost like they've been there for a full minute, trying to rouse Derek from the nightmares. His body jerks, confused for a long moment when he's caught between realities, and when he looks up, Stiles is staring down at him with wide eyes.

"I smelled smoke," Stiles says, a rush. "I smelled smoke, and I woke up, and you were having a nightmare. You were moving and making these noises-"

"The fire," Derek manages to get out, which is a surprise given how dry his mouth is.

Stiles lets go, leans back into the driver's seat. "You were dreaming about the fire. I smelled smoke."

They are both silent for awhile; Derek doesn't know what to say. He stares down at his palms like they can fix everything - either fingers or claws, it doesn't matter.

"Is this normal?" Stiles asks, and his voice is very small.

"I don't know," is all Derek can reply.

\--

Allison calls them the next day. It's a testament to how important the information is when she doesn't even pause upon hearing Derek pick up rather than Stiles.

"She knows you were here," she says, in a quick rush, and Derek can hear the hammering of her heart through the transmission, it's so loud. "She knows you're coming for her. I'm so sorry, I'm so-"

"What happened?" Stiles asks. He grabs the phone from Derek's hand, wrenches it so fast that, if he'd been a wolf, he might have taken a finger with him. "Is everyone okay? Allison?"

"Yeah, we're - we're fine." She's shaken, but sounds unhurt. Either way, they are too far to do anything. It's just more on Derek's conscience, a mountain of things he can't escape from, even with miles disappearing behind the Jeep's rusted bumper. "But she's going to be coming after you."

Stiles stops the car, doesn't even bother to really pull over, just hits the brake and it doesn't matter, because there's no one behind them. The road they're traveling is deserted (Stiles claimed it was because the supply routes here fell into disuse as soon as the major outposts in the Pacific Northwest were attacked). His hands are shaking when he looks up. Derek can hear his heart, too, pounding like a jackhammer.

"How much time do we have?" he asks, and Derek can't tell if it's aimed at him or Allison.

"A day, maybe," Allison replies. "I think... I think she can track you guys. I think she can track Derek."

"Fuck," Stiles hisses. He brings a hand to his mouth, wiping his fingers across his lips in a nervous gesture as his eyes fix on something outside the windshield. " _Fuck_ , I should have known. I should have guessed."

"You didn't know," Derek says, and wants to add _I didn't really know, either._

Stiles' head hits the headrest, hard and angry. "Dammit, dammit."

"Stiles?" Allison asks, worriedly, over the phone.

"It's fine," Stiles says, and Derek doesn't bother pointing out the lie since they can _both_ hear it. "I've gotta go, but thanks for the info."

There's silence, and then Allison says, again: "I'm sorry, Stiles."

"Not your fault," he promises, and switches the line dead.

"What are you going to do?" Derek asks. He's full of dread and apprehension, because Stiles has had a day to figure out what bits of power the emissary role has opened up to him, and Kate has had over a year and practice.

Stiles chews on this thumb nail before he responds. "I gotta figure out how to stop her."

"Stiles," Derek starts, "you can't-"

"What did I tell you about this?" Stiles snaps. His knee smacks into the bottom of the dashboard as he gets out, and before Derek can ask where he's going, he adds, "I hope you know how to drive, because I've got some major research to do."

\--

Derek drives. He spends the first twenty minutes terrified that he's going to kill them both; there wasn't a need for him to drive when they were living in the wild, and doing so would only draw attention to them, but he's done it twice. When hunters passed through and the pack took them down, to keep information about their whereabouts hidden, his uncle Peter had taken Derek with him to retrieve their car and bury it at the bottom of the lake.

The last place Derek wants to think about is the bottom of the lake, and he doesn't really want to ruminate on his uncle, either, so he tries to keep his gaze focused on the road and his foot as even as possible against the gas pedal. Stiles, it seems, is too busy going through books to even notice if the accelerator is being choked.

"Is there any way to sever the emissary bond?" Stiles asks, finally, with his head still bent down into the book.

"Kill her," Derek says.

"Simple," Stiles sighs. "And yet so very much not. There's no return policy on this thing? No, 'you break it, you buy it' sort of mentality?"

Derek glances at him out of the corner of his eye, one foot propped up on the dash and a book resting against his knee. "Are you having second thoughts?"

"Look, I really get the self-esteem meltdown thing here, I do," Stiles says, and he might laugh, but it's kind of hard to tell - it's the sort of laugh that isn't one, that's distorted and warped and ruined from life having its way. "But at some point, you're going to have to just admit to yourself that I'm here, and I chose to be here, and I'm not going to bolt."

"I know," Derek says.

Stiles' expression is thoughtful, but not angry, which is something, at least. "You don't," he disagrees, "but I get that, too."

Derek concentrates on the road, because letting his gaze linger too long on the splash of Stiles' ankle that is visible beneath the hem of his jeans, denim pulled up by the awkward splay of his limbs in the passenger seat, is distracting.

He can't do this again. He can't let himself destroy everything around him again - Cora is alive. He has to find her, because he owes her this. He owes her this much for stripping everything from her life, too.

"Whoa," Stiles says, and it's only then that Derek realizes that he's got his foot pressed flat on the pedal, and the Jeep is careening in the middle of the road, straddling the dotted line. "Okay, whoa, just - calm down, okay? Breathe. Don't kill us."

He can't see straight. Things are turning red at the edges of his vision. He tries to find something to focus on, but he's got a death-grip on the steering wheel and can't seem to unglue his fingers from it.

There is warmth on his hands, and Stiles' fingers curl around his own. "Just take us on the shoulder, okay? And ease up - I said ease up! Foot up. No more speed. Just... right, just slow down. Easy. I got the wheel, okay? Breathe. In and out. Important life stuff you have to remember to do. Breathe."

Somehow, the car stops. He didn't flip it and kill them both or anything ridiculous. His muscles are shaking, shaking so bad that his back is bucking a bit against the leather seat. 

He should have told Stiles no. This was the worst idea - he can't let himself do this all over again. He should know better. He should be able to _stop_.

"Derek," Stiles says, and maybe he's said it a few times, a repeated mantra. "It's going to be okay."

Derek comes back to himself in an angry rush of self-loathing and misery, the open wound in his chest that beats his family members' names a laceration all the way through his core.

"Breathe," Stiles says again. His hands are still on the wheel - the safe position. He's only barely touching Derek, a bit of his arm against Derek's wrist. "You're having an anxiety attack."

For some reason, this makes Derek laugh. It comes out garbled and mangled, a terrible sort of sound. A werewolf having a panic attack.

"I don't-" is all the further Derek gets before burying his head in his hands and trying to will everything away.

"Dude, I know," Stiles tells him. "I used to get them, too. When my mom... and my dad. All of that, it's fucking terrible."

He should push Stiles away. He's going to destroy himself.

When he looks up, the boy is looking at him with an open, curious expression.

"Usually driving used to give me road rage when it was stressful, like during rush hour," Stiles says. "But, hey, maybe there is a phantom traffic jam."

It's an easy out - offered and ready to be taken. Derek ignores it.

"Thanks," he says, quiet.

"Sure," Stiles replies. He sits back, but seems hesitant. His eyes, still strangely open, stay on Derek for several moments. "No problem."

\--

Maybe it's the knowledge that Kate is behind them somewhere, tracking them through powers she never should have been allowed to gain access to - magic that she used to murder innocent people. Knowing that she's there, it's messing with Derek's mind. He keeps thinking that he sees her, in the rearview mirror. Or around the tree. Or up ahead, in a patch of shadow, when it's really just an old signpost.

Stiles says that he hasn't felt anything through the charm. It's in the back, shoved in the seats so that it's hidden and always nearby. He says he thinks that it's safe to sleep, and that he is pretty sure that he can set up a ward to let him know if something comes near that's a werewolf.

Pity it's a human they're running from.

Derek sleeps fitfully. They are close to their destination, but now, knowing that she's trailing them, they are skating around the edges of the reserve. Derek doesn't know where Kate would be keeping Cora; maybe she moved the girl, now that she knows Derek is on his way.

He dreams about the forest, his forest, the one he was living in. The smell of it is so strong that it permeates the dream world. It sticks to his skin like a guilty jacket, the things he might as well have done himself. Derek moves through the trees he used to know by heart.

He finds Stiles standing at the bank of the river that passed through the heart of the woods.

"Is this it?" Stiles asks, sort of quiet, with his arms wrapped around his torso. "Where you lived?"

"Are you supposed to be here?" Derek asks. It's a strange thing, finding Stiles inside his dreams. "Where's Cora?"

Stiles shakes his head. He's fuzzy - somehow, in the dream, he's not clear, like Derek is already forgetting what he looks like. Or like there's interference, a bad radio signal trying to break through a storm.

"She's not here anymore," Stiles says.

"Why are _you_ here?" Derek asks.

The boy turns towards him. His eyes are white - all white, no color. He reaches for Derek's hand and his grip is so tight that Derek can feel his nails sinking into the back of his palm. "Because you have to wake up."

Derek wakes with a gasp, and pain in his hand; Stiles is clutching his fingers, like in the dream, across the gear shift. Derek's first instinct is to shift, because the air feels wrong and off and he doesn't know what to do. The smell he picks up is an undercurrent of electricity, sparking and ready to fly. He isn't sure if his own jerky movements back into wakefulness were what roused Stiles or not.

But Stiles is up, sitting straight up, and staring into the back of the Jeep where the charm's glow is evident through the seat.

"She's here," he gasps. He hasn't let go of Derek's hand yet. "Go-"

And that's when the surge of energy hits the Jeep, throwing the entire vehicle forward and over, flipping it, and crumpling the metal joints until all Derek can hear is the furious grind and shriek of steel.

\--

It takes a minute for him to come back to himself. His body is bleeding everywhere - skin torn and open, and he pushes himself up trying to ignore the sting as it knits itself back together. He'll heal from it, but Stiles won't, and the panic that grips his heart when he puts that together nearly steals his breath away.

"Oh, Derek," comes Kate's voice, and it sends a chill all the way down to his legs. He hates that voice. "You never were the smart one, were you?"

He tries to ignore her. The Jeep is a lost cause - twisted beyond repair, barely even in the same shape it started in. It's on its side, and the trail of glass extends like a bloody path, the innards of the vehicle strewn in every direction. _Stiles_.

"Did you really think I'd just let you go? You were so much fun, I had to see what you were up to after you got away. Pity you didn't die like I expected."

His body is still healing, and dragging himself across the ground is causing glass to lodge itself in his flesh. He winces, trying to ignore the sting of a particularly large piece that's embedded itself in his arm; it's not deep enough that his body will heal over it, but it hurts each time he uses the muscle, pulling himself along the ground. He can't see Stiles; he can't _smell_ Stiles.

Kate's voice behind him is making all his skin crawl, pushing him to just run away.

"I just can't believe that you've replaced me already," she says.

Derek feels a jolt of something through the ground - it reverberates up his arm, making his bones ache for a long second, and then it's gone. The pause gave his body time to try and heal itself without him dragging the wounds over the wreckage. He's strong enough to stand up, pushing himself upwards. The gunshot startles him, and the bullet hits him in the thigh.

From the immediate onslaught of pain, he knows it's been laced. Carefully, with precision, the type of wolfs bane that Kate is partial to - it gets in the blood stream, quickly, thinning out and spreading, until his whole body is on fire and his mind confused and unable to focus. He falls and tries to catch himself, but he misses and hits a bit of the Jeep that's been torn free. He should have known she would aim for something that would keep him alive; she wants him to be aware when she's killing him. A bullet to the chest would have been so much quicker.

He can hear Kate, behind him, somewhere past where the glass starts mixing with the grass. "And to think all the time I spent-"

He looks up because he at least wants to see her coming - the luxury he didn't have last time. He wants to know, this round, that he invited this himself, so he raises his head despite the pain lacing up his torso, to see Stiles standing in front of him.

"How cute," Kate laughs. "Derek got himself a pet."

"Except, too bad for you, I haven't had my rabies shot," Stiles replies, and then he _moves_. Derek can feel it, which is strange. Stiles makes a shoving motion with both hands, towards where Kate is standing, and the force that jumps out from his fingers is like the aftermath of an explosion. Derek can only see Kate fly backwards, into the trees; the trunks shake and quell around them, a few cracking and splintering, the hollowed old roots that have long since lost their hold in the earth.

Stiles' hands are on Derek's biceps, urging him upwards. "C'mon, we have to _go_. We're going to have to run, I'm sorry, your leg-"

"'m fine," Derek grits out between clenched teeth. Running on his leg sends pain up his body so strong he thinks he'll black out, but he keeps moving. He can't shift with the wolfs bane lighting his body on fire. Stiles keeps an arm around his shoulders, tries to keep him upright. They run until Derek can barely breathe, and the world around him is only dark. He's lost his senses, can't smell the leaves, can't feel the moon - there's just the bullet lodged in his thigh and the pain taking over his world.

He doesn't know where they are when he collapses. His hands meet clumped dirt and crumbling leaves, so they are still somewhere in the reserve. He tries gasping out a question, and what comes out is thick and wet, unintelligible.

"Derek," Stiles says. He sounds very far away.

Derek tries to wave him off. He should go and save himself; staying with Derek is a lost cause. It's only going to get him killed. If Stiles understands the message behind the action, he chooses to ignore it. Instead, he leans in closer, hands pressing at the agonizing flesh around the bullet entry.

"Oh, Jesus, I'm going to - I'm going to have to get this out. Okay? Shit, Derek. Okay, I'm just - okay. I'm going to dig the bullet out. Please don't die. Don't die on me, you asshole, don't even think about it."

He sees Cora, her expression sad - he's sorry he won't be able to save her. He sees Laura, right before the sword goes through her, the second that the Alpha powers are passed onto him, after they were on the run and trying to get away from memories of the fire that claimed the others. He sees his mother, and his father, and his uncle, clustered around him. He wonders if they are judging him. They should be.

"Derek?" he hears from Stiles. It's something to focus on, but it's not enough. This stupid, gutsy, brave young man that is scrambling to try and extract the bullet from Derek's leg. He wants to say thank you. He _needs_ to say something, because Stiles was the only bright thing in the last month of Derek's life. He's an idiot for ever caring enough, and that stings enough to bring a wave of hot prickling to Derek's eyes.

He tries to form words, but he can't. So he just focuses on Stiles, burning bright at the side of his failing vision, and wills all the things he can't say onto him before everything goes black.

\--

Derek isn't expecting to wake to nothing, though he's a little surprised that he wakes up at all. There's no residual pain at the bullet entry site. He's a little groggy, and doesn't know how long he's been unconscious.

"Maybe an hour," Stiles says, eyes apologetic. "I would totally let you sleep longer, but... well, we gotta go. We need a plan or something, and the Jeep's totaled."

His limbs obey his orders when he tries moving. He flexes his fingers and tests his joints, and everything seems to be in working order. It's odd, though, considering that he was quickly succumbing to the wolfs bane when he passed out.

"I got the bullet out," Stiles shrugs, and looks away. He probably doesn't enjoy the memories of digging his fingers into Derek's leg, and Derek can't blame him for that.

"Thanks," Derek says, mouth dry.

Stiles turns to him, quick and sharp. "You don't get to thank me for saving your life," he says. "That's just what you do."

"It's the second time you've done it," Derek points out.

He gets another shrug in response. "Guess we're square, then."

But they aren't, and Derek doesn't get the chance to argue with him. Stiles is up and moving, and as Derek gets his own body to follow, he sees that he's been dragged into a small outcropping of rock, just enough to cover them with morning shadows.

"The way I see it, we have two options," Stiles says. His jeans are torn in one knee, and there's a trail of mud going up the back of his sweatshirt. He seems unconcerned with the blood that Derek can see embedded beneath his fingernails. "We either leave the reserve and try to find some place we can steal a car or get shelter or something, or we keep going with the original plan and just dive in."

"What's your suggestion?" Derek asks.

This seems to surprise Stiles. "I - well, going out is risky. I mean, going _in_ is risky, too, but at least here, all we are dealing with is Kate and the Argents, and we know we're going up against them. But out there, we could get noticed by other hunters, and then. Well. I don't really want that many people trying to kill us."

"Okay," Derek says.

Stiles' eyebrows rise up. "Okay?"

"The role of the emissary is to help make decisions," Derek says, simply. "So I'm deferring to you."

"But you're the alpha."

"And I've been unconscious for an hour and don't even know where we are," Derek says. "So, I think here, it's better to go with your gut."

There's a long moment of silence, and then Stiles grins. It's an odd sort of expression to be wearing in the situation they are in - hunted, with Kate on their heels and whoever knows how many hunters waiting for them where Cora is being held. It's quick and fleeting, but it's there, and Derek can practically feel the warmth of it.

"Okay," he says.

"Okay," Derek repeats, unnecessarily.

"I'm glad you trust me," Stiles tells him, as he turns to leave the shadows of their strange hiding place, "because I trust you."

Derek can't think of a single reason why he should.

\--

"Can you feel Cora?" Stiles ask, as they start to move through the trees and Derek devotes most of his senses to picking up the sound of footsteps behind them. "As her alpha, can you figure out where she is?"

"I don't... think so," Derek says. He feels like he's disappointing Stiles by saying it. He's not used to the powers yet; the alpha status is in his blood, but it doesn't really feel like it's _his_. Cora is family, and pack, but he can't figure out how to stretch out through the pack bond to pick her out. They aren't close enough for him to hear the familiar signature of her heartbeat.

But Stiles just nods, like he was expecting that. "I think I can do a spell to locate her, then, since she technically also falls under my jurisdiction."

He laughs, quietly, smothering it with one hand. "That sounds so weird, sorry. Like an episode of a crime drama."

Then he falls silent for a long time, and neither of them speaks. Stiles isn't good at walking around silently, but he isn't terrible, either. Derek would make the shift and travel at a faster speed, but it would mean leaving Stiles alone and weaponless, and he doesn't want to risk it.

"Hey," Stiles says, finally, after what feels like hours when all the trees look the same. "Tell me what you're thinking about."

Derek swallows, biting back things he can't say. "I was thinking about how if I told you that you shouldn't be in this situation, you'd punch me in the face."

Stiles laughs, again, richer this time. "Dude, I'd probably break my hand. You've probably got, like, adamantium on your bones."

"But," Derek continues, and looks straight ahead, trying to keep track of how far they've gone and the feel of the earth beneath his feet, wolf senses extended as far as he can stretch, "I'm also... glad. That you're here."

When he glances over, Stiles' features have gone very soft.

"Is that a 'thank you'?" Stiles asks, quietly.

"I guess," Derek replies, and his voice shakes. "A pretty shitty one."

He doesn't know what it means, that a human has given so much for a werewolf he literally just met bleeding on his doorstep. He'd stopped believing in goodwill, or humanity. It's hard to let go of the hatred and betrayal he'd held towards the entire species, but Derek can feel it slipping out, like spilled blood, drip by drip.

Stiles reaches over and touches Derek's elbow. He's touched Derek before, and undoubtedly has initiated more intimate contact when he was healing him, but this time feels different. His fingers are warm and almost hesitant, in the way that nothing Stiles does is, which makes it all the more thought-provoking. Derek doesn't shake the touch off, because he's too busy guiltily drinking it in.

His heart, that he'd thought was broken and destroyed beyond repair, flutters against his ribs.

Desperate for anything to break the tight feeling in his chest, Derek asks, "What are _you_ thinking?"

"That it's going to storm," Stiles says, matter-of-fact.

Derek's feet stop. "You can _feel_ that?" he asks, and he's dumbfounded, because Stiles is so _new_ at this, he shouldn't have the ability to tell something like that already. It's only been days, and his powers are weak and untested at best.

"Don't have to," Stiles says, and points up at the tree line. "Because I just saw lightning."

\--

The rocky terrain of the landscape lends itself to caves and hollows. Derek finds a small half-tunnel within a sheet of rock face that can keep them dry until the storm blows over. The good thing about Kate is that she's still human, and even her granted powers won't be able to get her through a thunderstorm that's disrupting everything.

Instead of making him feel more secure, all Derek can feel is the buzzing beneath his breastbone, threatening to shake his form apart.

They are both soaked by the time they get in, and Derek knows he will dry quicker. At least it isn't winter, and he says as much just to get a crooked grin out of Stiles, who sheds his outer sweatshirt layer and tries to keep from shivering with his wet t-shirt clinging to his skin.

"I think we're headed towards the middle of the reserve," Stiles says, teeth chattering. "I'm assuming that's where their base is - isolated, like sadistic serial killers."

Derek wants to agree, because he's finally beginning to feel a tug. A tug that leads him to pack, to family. He wonders why it's taken so long to feel it; hadn't his mother always known where they were at all times? Shouldn't the alpha be able to feel that?

It stings a bit to think about. Laura had been his alpha for a little under a year, a year full of moving around, jumping from place to place - never staying anywhere long enough to get tracked down again. He'd deferred to her, because she was family, and she was his alpha. Now, it's his, and he doesn't know what to do with it.

They sit inside the cave, quiet for a long time. The storm will pass, and they'll continue, but for now, there is an odd feeling of rest.

"How do you think Cora got away?" Stiles asks, very quiet. His chin is pressed down into his hands.

"I don't know," Derek replies. It haunts him, too - should Laura have known that Cora was out there, alone and on the run, just like them? Did Kate have her before she went after Laura and Derek? Did Kate kill Laura because she _knew_ that Derek would inherit the alpha, and was she banking on him figuring out she had Cora then? Or would it have been just another torture device, designed to make him crazy with guilt?

There are too many questions he doesn't really want to know the answers to. He shakes his head, trying to clear his thoughts.

"What did you do?" Stiles asks. "After the fire?"

"We ran," Derek says, numb. "Laura and I, we just... ran. Anywhere we could find where it seemed safe enough. She was dealing with becoming the alpha, and we were both dealing - well. We just had to get away. I don't even know where we went."

He could probably draw it on a map, though, from his memories and images that seem to bob on the wake of the grief that consumed that part of his life. The abandoned outposts, the other packs - the trail they left behind of blood and smoke and tears.

"I don't know how or why Kate didn't come after us immediately," Derek continues, and doesn't know why he's still talking. "Maybe we moved too much, maybe she couldn't track us. Or maybe she just didn't care. It was worse, knowing what had happened. The torture was better than anything she could have physically done."

"Derek," Stiles says.

Derek shakes his head again. "But now..."

"Now she wants you dead," Stiles finishes. They are both silent for awhile. "Why now?"

Derek shrugs.

"No, really, why now?" Stiles says. "Why, after all this time, are you suddenly a threat? Is it because... because the Coalition power is shifting? There are more sympathizers now, more of a rebellion. It's organized, or at least starting to be. If word got out of what she'd done to you, and the torture, and how many laws she's broken, it wouldn't help the hunters' cause at all."

"So it's political?" Derek asks. It seems even worse to think that Laura died for political gain, so that Kate's transgressions wouldn't come to light and hurt the cause. It seems cheap, somehow, and it burns in his throat.

Stiles stares at him across the small space separating them, arms wrapped around his knees. "Or personal. She's psychotic. I doubt her motives will ever make any sense."

"We're just animals to her," Derek whispers, in an embarrassing display of being unable to stop the words from tumbling out.

 _That_ gets a reaction. Stiles is up, crawling across the ground, and stops in front of Derek with a look that might be anger, might be incredulous, and might be anguish - or all three, rolled together. Stiles rarely seems to be feeling only _one_ thing at a time.

"Shut up," Stiles rasps, and now he's angry, now Derek can hear the furious pitter-patter of his heartbeat. "Shut the fuck up, do you hear me? You aren't _animals_ , Jesus Christ. You're people. Maybe you're different, but you don't - Derek, it's not like you don't deserve to _live_."

When Derek had said shit like that to Laura, she'd just pursed her mouth and let it go. She seemed to understand that the pessimistic crap he believed was a coping mechanism; that his loss of hope stemmed from something neither of them could ever really touch. She couldn't change it, any more than he could. She got that, and she let him bear them both down with the negativity of their situation.

Derek is angry that Stiles won't let him do the same thing. It's _his_ method of dealing, and it's _his_ existence that seems to be an affront to so many, so why shouldn't he be able to do it?

He growls, and starts to move forward, which is a mistake on all fronts because that's what he would do to Laura, challenge her, push her into forcing him back into submission - but Stiles is human, and he can't use the same tactics here.

It doesn't matter, because Stiles moves quicker than Derek thought possible and pins Derek's hands back against the wall with _force_. There's the acrid smell of electricity again, and Derek realizes he's using some sort of magic. He definitely shouldn't be this strong.

"What are you going to do?" Stiles demands, leaning into Derek's space. "Are you just going to let them hunt you down? Give in? Let Kate _win_? You can't honestly believe the Coalition bullshit. You're _people_ , fuck, and if I have to make you believe it, then god dammit, I will."

The fight goes out of Derek. He's tired. For once, maybe it would be easier to believe in something less depressing. He lets his arms sag, but Stiles still doesn't let go.

"You're not a monster," Stiles tells him. "Kate is."

His fingers let go of Derek's wrists, but they don't fall away. They slide down Derek's arms until they are at his shoulders, lingering in a way that seems very unsure. Stiles bites down on his bottom lip, tugging the flesh into his mouth between his teeth, and his gaze doesn't falter.

"I think," Stiles starts, slowly, and then seems to change his mind mid-sentence. "If you get mad at me... well, fuck it."

Then he leans forward and crosses the rest of the distance to kiss him, and Derek would be lying if he said that some part of him wasn't waiting for it to happen. Stiles' mouth is the hesitant sort of eager, curious but unsure if it's even allowed. Derek doesn't really do anything as he waits for the panic to hit - the memories, the rush of shame and guilt, the bits of himself that he now can't not associate with Kate, only it doesn't come. The panic never surfaces.

He's stuck on that, so stuck that he can't get both his mind and body to work at the same time, and Stiles pulls away. Derek realizes belatedly that he didn't _move_ , he didn't reciprocate, and Stiles is looking disappointed, though the vulnerability is being carefully schooled into something harder and less cracked.

It's been a year since Kate betrayed him. It was awful and horrible and yes, he's held it inside his heart like a parasite eating away at his soul, but as Derek stares at Stiles' face, he realizes that maybe he had it all wrong. He didn't desire the wolf for strength - the wolf desired having his humanity back.

"I'm sor-" Stiles starts, and Derek finally figures out how to move his body again. He moves forward to join their mouths again, and if his aim is a little off, it's just because he's nervous. He's afraid of how badly he _wants_ this, how much he's craved this connection, this trust. How so much of his fear was rooted in the terror that he'd never be able to believe in it again. And Stiles is light and pliant beneath his hands, warm and open.

Stiles makes a noise, in the back of his throat, arms going around Derek's shoulders when Derek leans forward away from the rock. He drags his tongue across Derek's lip, pulls his mouth open so he can find his way in.

When they pull apart, they are both breathless. Derek's whole core is thrumming with anxious energy, like he's still somehow waiting for the other shoe to drop. Stiles moves back, but not entirely, still jumbled up in a tangle of limbs in Derek's lap. His hands slide forward from the back of Derek's head to pause at the sides of his face, cupping his jaw.

"Derek," he says, sort of warbling. "I know you have to hear it."

Derek breathes, a split-second of nothing, and then says, "I trust you."

"I'm never going to betray you," Stiles tells him, and it's the surest truth Derek's ever heard riding on the steady, unwavering pounding of his heart.

\--

After the storm clears, the forest feels both heavier and lighter: heavier because Derek knows they have to keep going to force the confrontation with Kate, and lighter because Stiles is still next to him, a jagged force of determination and awkward movements.

"I don't know where to go," Derek admits. The tug to Cora is too faint. He hasn't had enough time to really think about it, to hone in on it. He wishes Laura were here, and then banishes the thought. He has to keep her, but keep her memory on his own terms - the kind that don't interfere with everything else. She'd hate him for that, for using her death as a propeller towards his own self-destructive ends.

Stiles turns in all directions, making a circle, and then looks to the right. "That way," he says, pointing.

He should ask how Stiles knows. He should question how Stiles can feel that.

Instead, he just nods, and lets Stiles lead. In the end, it doesn't matter how they get there, so long as he can extract his revenge across Kate's throat with his claws.

\--

As they approach the center, Derek can start to feel Cora's presence in his web. His mind is a strange, tangled mess of things he doesn't quite understand yet, but he can feel her there, and he latches, trying to get a concrete hold of the pulse she makes within his subconscious.

He knows they're headed in the right direction.

"Derek," Stiles says, voice laced with tension, "when we get there, it's going to be-"

"I know," Derek cuts him off.

Irritation flashes across Stiles' features. "No, you don't. It's not going to be a cake walk, and we need to have some kind of plan, and-"

Derek, while walking through the leaves, hits a wall. He can't see it, but it's as solid as anything. He hits it with too much force without realizing it's there and bounces back, flat on his ass, splayed ungracefully across the forest floor. Within a half-second, his wolf instincts are roaring into being, scenting everything around them. He didn't sense the mountain ash.

 _Fuck_ , he hadn't sensed it at all.

"What-?" Stiles starts to yell, and he can cross it without problem, probably jumped right over the line. At least he understands fast enough to drop down to his knees, groping in the dead leaves and underbrush to try and figure out how the hunters would have managed an entire unbroken circle without the wind or a wild animal wrecking the line. "Jesus, I think it's underground, it's - I can't _find_ it, they have it underground. I can't believe this, I can't believe I didn't _think_ of this-"

"Stiles," Derek tries. His wolf wants to rip, and he's antsy against the sensation. He can smell them, now, around them; the mountain ash, wherever it is, has tripped something, and the hunters know they're here. Whatever element of surprise they might have had is lost.

Stiles drags his hands through his hair, depositing bits of leaves in the strands. "Okay, listen, I'm going to break the circle."

"How?" Kate asks, from a ridge that isn't a ridge at all - it's the side of a complex, the building suddenly snapping into view. How they hadn't seen it before is thanks to the way it blends seamlessly into the forest itself, emerging from the ground in a gentle arc and covered with the safety of thick branches and gnarled trunks.

Stiles stands up, inching towards Derek.

"I know you fancy yourself a little protector now," Kate laughs, "but how exactly are you going to break a circle of mountain ash held underground?"

There are more of them, and all of them are on the side that Derek can't get to. It's such an obvious, _stupid_ trap that Derek should have seen it a mile off; they have bows and crossbows drawn and ready, arrows and bolts tipped with more than just wolfs bane, and Derek can't do a single thing against them because he walked right up against the side of it.

And now that he knows Cora is here, he can't leave, either. Kate knows. Kate has to be the one who set the whole thing up, because Derek can see her handiwork in the engineering.

"I'm not feeling very charitable towards you right now," Stiles says, with pursed lips and fingers that are twitching at his sides. "You wrecked my Jeep. I liked that thing."

Kate shrugs, grinning. "You can bill me later, after I kill the rest of this disgusting blight of a pack."

"Keeping them alive was kind of the point, wasn't it?" Stiles asks, and Derek doesn't know why he doesn't just _shut up_. "Part of your sadistic little... whatever it was. You let Derek live because you knew it'd be worse than killing him."

"You'd make such a good hunter," Kate muses. She comes down from the ledge, a bit, and the whiff of her scent on the breeze is enough to make Derek's whole being run cold. He shifts, into beta, even though he knows it's useless because he can't get over the line.

"Pity you made such a shit emissary," Stiles replies.

Kate just laughs.

"Stiles," Derek tries, to tell him to run, to get away, to save himself, and is ignored entirely.

Stiles turns his head towards the other hunters, the ones still kneeling motionless with their weapons ready to shoot beyond the safety of the mountain ash. "I'm giving you a chance to leave. Now."

There is no response save for a few chuckles - amusement. Stiles is _amusing_ them. Derek doesn't know why the kid just won't _go_ and save his own skin. It's suicide to stay where he is and keep taunting them.

"Are you threatening me?" Kate asks, and she's still smiling. She keeps moving towards them, toeing the line where Derek assumes she knows safety is. He wants to launch at her and tear her apart, and it's only by curling his hands into tight fists and letting his own claws sink into his palms that he can fight the sensation down. She killed Laura; she killed his _pack_. "Because it's kind of adorable, I have to say."

"Derek," Stiles says, at a normal tone, though his gaze stays fixed on Kate. "I'm gonna need you to get behind me."

Derek shifts back a step without thinking much about it, and Kate's smile turns predatory.

"What are you going to do to me?" she asks. "You're not a hunter, you're just a human."

"No," Stiles tells her, and only then does Derek _get_ it, does he feel the energy that Stiles has been slowly weaving together between curled fingers, "I'm so much more than that."

He sends the initial blast out like a wave, a sword, and it hits the trees and hunters alike. It's so loud, as loud as the roar of a jet engine, that it takes Derek a minute to sort noises out of the din, and then he hears the shouts - the screams as the hunters fly into the air. One makes it out of the tree line and soars, and others aren't so lucky, slamming into still-standing tree trunks; Derek can _hear_ branches puncture one unfortunate hunter's lungs before the body drops and goes still.

There's another blast, stronger this time, taking twigs and leaves off, because it's missing Kate - she's got a shield around herself, and through the rush, Derek can almost see the shimmering outline of it. Whatever power is left in her, she's using everything she has.

Stiles mumbles something, looks irritated, and then thrusts both hands forward again and a wave of _fire_ goes with them. It slinks up trees and flickers out when it meets no resistance, and around Kate, it circles and licks and tries to consume the shield whole. She's keeping it up by the skin of her teeth, face contorted with exertion.

Stiles lets go abruptly, and everything ceases, and then he makes a grapping motion towards her form. Whatever is around her, it's suddenly _gone_ , and the absence of magic is so keen that even Derek feels it tickling across his skin. Kate's hands fly to her throat, eyes bugging out wide - an invisible hand, then, blocking her air. She grapples at it, and Stiles snaps his fingers, and the vines dart out of the trees like snakes to wrap themselves around her feet and hoist her up, in, until she's pinned with all of them against the side of the biggest, oldest tree there.

It hurts to let go of the breath Derek was unconsciously holding. He's never _seen_ that much magic in his life, he's never been able to feel it like that before. Stiles, looking weary, drops his hands and just sort of _collapses_ on himself, though the vines keeping Kate held aloft remain where they are.

"She's yours," Stiles says, with a half-hearted shrug. "It's... it's for you, really."

"I can't," Derek gestures, because Kate's on the other side of the line.

"Oh, yeah," Stiles replies. "You can. I broke the line at the start of all that. Messy pipes underground - effective, though, so I'll have to remember that trick."

It's not that Derek doesn't believe him, but he still has to gingerly walk over the threshold before it truly sinks in. Kate is eyeing him, struggling, and he can see broken blood vessels that, should she live, will darken and purple by morning.

"You're a monster," she spits.

Derek pauses. "Maybe," he says, and it's strange how much it doesn't bother him. "But that's not really the point here, is it?"

"I don't regret it," she says, eyes flashing.

"I do," Derek tells her, and he hadn't even noticed that his claws are out. "Everything except for this."

It's merciful when he gets her across the throat. There's only a few seconds when her heart is still going before everything stops and she slumps, chin meeting the vine. It should feel like something. He thinks it should be different, like a weight leaving his shoulders, and instead, he doesn't feel anything but oddly empty.

He turns to Stiles, who still looks exhausted.

"You're a spark," he says, with a bubble of mirthless laughter caught in his throat. "You're magic."

"Yeah," Stiles agrees. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you."

It all makes sense, though - the things he shouldn't have been able to do, how fast he took to the emissary powers. Derek should have seen it, and didn't, and he wonders if that, too, ought to bother him.

"Remember that thing we were talking about?" Stiles asks, sort of hesitantly, and looks down at his fingers, maybe surprised that he's still got any after the display of energy. "That... hypothetical figure we weren't sure would ever exist?"

Derek is pretty sure he knows when the bond changed from Kate to Stiles. It feels a lot better this way - safer. Right. It's held in the hands of someone who is throwing the line right back. He nods.

Stiles smiles, crooked and unsure, hands going out to either side: "Well, I guess we'll get to see what all I can do, huh?"

It takes only a few seconds to cross the space between them and gather Stiles in his arms as best he can; they are eye to eye, for the most part, only Stiles seems to work to make himself smaller and it's deceiving. Derek breathes his hair and tries not to cling too hard, and feels the prick of fingernails digging into his shoulders like they are desperately trying to find an anchor in the storm.

"We will," he promises, against Stiles' temple.

"Okay," Stiles says. He sounds better now, less hesitant, and Derek still doesn't want to let him go. There's something grounding about standing there and knowing that, for the first time in a long time, he doesn't need to be looking over his shoulder. "Let's go get your sister."


End file.
